


Ephemera

by penceyprat



Category: The 1975 (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Band, Alternate Universe - Small Town, Enemies to Lovers, Family Issues, George works in his dad's friend's shop over the summer and he's not sure what to do with his life, M/M, Matty is a pretentious asshole dickhead but he's trying his best, angsty but cute, george totally doesn't love matty... totally, he's lovely really though, matty has very strong opinions on just about everything, raughy is real, then one day matty walks in and theyre both sure that they've never met anyone quite so irritating, they just can't keep out of each others lives though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-18
Updated: 2016-06-18
Packaged: 2018-07-15 20:27:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 36,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7237285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/penceyprat/pseuds/penceyprat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>George didn't expect much of his life. He come to be rather complacent with the ways things had turned out to be. He wasn't unhappy, per se, just very uninspired by the world around him. He found himself with little more than vague enthusiasm towards a select few things in his life. Perhaps he'd thought he was okay with that, and that he'd live his life amounting to very little at all. Perhaps he really had thought that, but that was before he'd met Matty.</p>
<p>Matty didn't expect much of himself. He'd fall out of trust with the world, and came to bury the person he'd once been deep inside himself, under a mess of arrogance and over spoken ideas about the way things should be. Everything was bullshit - love, family, being a 'functioning member of society', and perhaps it didn't look like he was ever going to get far with his life. Perhaps he'd thought he was okay with that: with locking up who he really was inside everything he'd wanted to be. Perhaps he really had believed that, but that was before he'd met George.</p>
<p>Neither of them had much cared for change, but the thing was that change never did stop to ask for your opinion before it happened.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ephemera

Arguably, the best thing about the shop was the fact that it was buried so deep in a mess of little, dimly light, yet somehow warming, and indeed to some degree, homely, alleyways. The shops in general were packed far too tightly together; they consisted of small, awkwardly shaped buildings, that due to the general lack of space, the owners had resorted to expanding their shops upwards into less than adequately sized upstairs spaces. 

It was the part of town that remained somewhat hidden away from the industrial front of everything else, away from the eye of a casual passerby - not so much the kind of place you could accidentally end up in. Although, in truth, the very same awkwardly cramped, quaint, trying its best kind of feeling radiated through the whole town. It was just drowned out in some places more than others: on the high street, for example, which was paved ten metres wide with cobbles, as opposed to the metre or so room you had between shops in the alleyways, at best. 

It wasn’t the most desolate of places - certainly full of life, and in some regards, much more so than the bleak, grey, finely tuned structure and formalities of bigger cities, fitted with brand name high street shops and department stores. Of course, however, it was by no means a hub of excitement - a great expanse of life and unique culture, or particularly much of note at all, but still it wasn’t like they were tucked away in some hamlet in the middle of the countryside or something like that. They had three different supermarkets - a Tesco, a Sainsbury’s,  _ and  _ an Asda. A Mcdonald’s and a Burger King. A little, squashed in Primark on the end of the high street, and a Costa Coffee. It was by no means the worst place, yet by no means the best - perhaps mind-numbingly average, or just perhaps comfortably so. It was really all up to opinion.

There were, however, quite the selection of home businesses, smaller shops, little establishments with more character to say for themselves than anything else, which although they lay tucked away, in less frequented corners and streets, were at times visited far more frequently than the other parts of town.

To the left was a place that specialised in handmade jewellery run by a woman in her fifties who tended to offer every single customer a cup of tea, even if they never ended up buying anything. To the right was a bakery, a family business kind of thing, that did everything from plain white loaves to weird artisanal pieces that seemed much more for display and serving as the establishment’s facebook profile pictures, as opposed to actual food.

_ The _ shop itself, buried so deep amidst everything else, with very little to say for itself, was a secondhand shop, not really specialising in anything: racks of clothes over to one side of the store, shelves of books directly opposite the checkout, an old bicycle in the corner, propped up against the window, alongside an old style kind of vintage dollhouse, faced outwards as to angle the chipped and broken side of the roof away from the public eye. 

It wasn’t visited all that frequently, hidden away with little unique to say for itself, and George, who sat behind the checkout, for hours at a time on most days now, was so very okay with that. It wasn’t that he didn’t  _ care _ , because he did care, very much so, about lots of things, just less so about the secondhand shop that his dad’s friend owned, and just less so about the job he’d gotten at it as his dad’s friend, Andy, spent some time with his mother, who wasn’t all that well, and didn’t look like she’d be getting better.

Really, at nineteen, George ought to have been able to think of a million better ways to spend his time, a million better ways to waste away the summer, a million better ways to waste away his life. The fact was, however, that he didn’t quite mind it, not at all. It wasn’t that he was lost out there, in the great expanse of life, or alone, or fed up with everything, or anything like that at all. He just found himself content, content with little advance on mediocrity, and finding no reason to change that. He quite liked the place, after all, and George was living the kind of life where  _ quite _ liking something was enough.

He spent the days listening to music, scrolling somewhat mindlessly through social media on his laptop until a customer happened to come inside. Then, of course, he’d actually do the job that he was probably being paid too much to do, and smile at them, making light conversation as he rang up their items, which was something he found himself good at, for what little it meant. 

He quite liked talking to people. He  _ quite _ liked a lot of things really, and found himself awfully impartial to the rest of it. In all honesty, his life didn’t quite amount to all of that much, but he’d never felt the looming presence of a weight balanced precariously upon his shoulders, declaring that it needed to amount to something more. He’d simply grown past the childhood phase of thinking that his life was something special, and that he’d grow up to be someone famous, someone remembered for something, or something like that. 

In his mind, and by his own way of thinking, things did happen for a reason, but that reason was that they just  _ did.  _ That was how the world worked, things kept happening, people kept living, and maybe one day they wouldn’t, but that was much beyond his concern. He was content in living his life without much fuss, and letting the rest of the world get on with theirs.

It wasn’t that he didn’t care, it was just that he was happy and didn’t see the need to ask for much else. He had a job that required him to do very little, that he found himself vaguely satisfied with. The more he thought about it, he was just doing very much the same stuff that he’d be doing if he was sat at home in his room, except usually he was wearing more clothes, not that he made much of a habit of sitting around stark naked, but he was lazy, and he was making the best out of having moved out from his parents’ house.

George wondered if his parents had expected him to grip this new found freedom with everything he had and run around every night at all hours, going to parties and getting beyond wasted, having sex with absolutely everyone, things like that. He wondered that if they had, whether or not they’d be so supportive of him moving into a flat with his friend Adam, who wasn’t the most responsible of people in the world, but at least wasn’t, well, a massive fucking idiot. George liked to think he wasn’t a massive fucking idiot too, but sometimes he kind of was.

It wasn’t that he was the most boring person in the world, or at least he hoped that he wasn’t, and he’d make quite the claim against it, probably, if he felt like it at the time. He had interests, he had friends, he did things, but they didn’t amount to all that much, in his own admission. Yet then again, in his mind, that was fine.

They went to parties sometimes - the smaller kind of parties though. The kind that someone’s friend’s boyfriend’s brother holds in a rented one bedroom bungalow that looks more like a garage or a shed or something like that than an actual house. The kind where you bring your own store brand alcohol that you bought on the way there - in previous years having hoped they didn’t ask you for I.D. The kind where you sit around getting stoned and listening to the kind of music that just about one person there actually enjoys, and another six claim to like because they think it makes them seem cooler, whereas the rest of the people there are just a little too out of it to give much a fuck otherwise.

He got properly wasted sometimes, although just stoned more often. George smoked quite a lot of weed, actually - not enough for it to be a problem, but regularly. He just wasn’t quite so excited by getting so drunk that he had to be dragged to A&E at four in the morning, because that just wasn’t fun for anyone involved. He was however, much more comfortable with getting drunk to an extent. Fun drunk, happy drunk, bubbly drunk, knowing responsibility and when to stop drunk, because he sort of had his life together more so than he might like to have admitted.

And of course, he had sex sometimes - as most people did. Sometimes a lot, but that was exclusively when he was with someone - he wasn’t much for casual sex - something that he felt just didn’t mean a great deal at all. It wasn’t like he was the soppy romantic type, he just felt like it should maybe mean something more than just a one night stand. Maybe he was just a bit uncomfortable with getting fully naked around strangers he’d known for barely a few hours - there was that too. 

He was single now, but he’d had girlfriends before, boyfriends before too. His last relationship had ended with his girlfriend going off to university in Birmingham, because that was of course, a thing that people were doing at their age - getting up and getting on with their lives, moving out further than into a block of flats a fifteen minute walk away from their parents’ house. 

George wondered if it should bother him, or at least bother him more than it did, because it did bother him just a little, and maybe more than just a little on occasion. However, in all honesty, he wasn’t quite that drawn to much outside of his town. As pathetic as he felt it sounded, he just didn’t feel like there was anything much for him to go to university for. After all, he had a slightly drowned out sense of aspiration, and a pliant blanket of complacency to wrap himself up in - what more could he want?

The thing was, that in all of this, he was happy, things were good, things were alright. Things were just about how he’d quite like them to be; he’d finish his shift at the shop in an hour and a half’s time, and then he’d go out and meet Adam by the Waterstones on the corner of the high street. He’d drag Adam into the Tesco so he could buy some more cigarettes, having finished his last pack on his lunch break, sort of just for something to do - Laura hadn’t been replying to his texts, and he needed something else to waste the time with. 

Laura was this girl he liked, sort of, vaguely, something like that. She was kind of pretty, she had a boyfriend though, and that was that, because George held not being an asshole about things very highly - not to feel better about himself, just because it was the right thing to do. He had never liked her all that much to begin with anyway. She was just nice to talk to, and that was that.

They’d then go over to the house Ross and John had bought together three weeks ago and sit around and talk shit. Three weeks prior, there’d been a stupid kind of housewarming party, that wasn’t much of a party at all - there’d been about fifteen people in total, but at least there’d been a decent amount to drink. No one had been at all sure what to buy them in the way of housewarming gifts, because who the fuck has a serious housewarming party who isn’t a forty five year old housewife and mother of two? 

George found himself able to very vividly recall the journey to the home and living section of Asda that he’d taken with his friend, Ellie, just a few hours before. No one had initially thought that they’d been at all serious about the whole housewarming gift thing, but the reality had come crashing down all too late. The two had however, still struggled to take it very seriously at all, and had nearly gotten kicked out of the shop for bursting into a fit of manic, hysterical laughter in front of a teapot with a face painted onto it. 

In the end, Ellie had gotten them a value multi pack of scented candles for £2.50 (they smelt like shit, but what else had they expected?), and George had seriously considered buying them the somewhat disturbing looking teapot with a face, but instead settled for a series of largely unnecessary kitchen utensils that he either straight out laughed at the existence of, or couldn’t name off the top of his head. He reckoned those were the kind of things they’d actually value and appreciate, funnily enough.

Those had not been the worst gifts at all. Really, they should have thought through what kind of people they had as friends before they organised the whole thing. Joel had gotten them a happy 50th wedding anniversary card - one of those ridiculous waste of space ones that are all in all about the size of an A3 piece of paper. He’d then gone and gotten everyone to sign it exactly ten minutes before he’d given it to them, along with a bouquet of red roses, which on its own, was probably one of the nicer gifts they’d received. It was the fact that he’d presented it to them with the card, and then proceeded to pick off petals and throw it over the two of them like wedding confetti, that ruined it.

Really though, they’d gotten to the stage of coupley and disgusting that they’d gone and moved in together, so they kind of deserved it. Like seriously, they’d made a trip to Ikea together, and come back with possibly the ugliest looking items of furniture possible, but that was besides the point. They probably would end up getting married by Christmas at this rate. Not that anyone genuinely minded, they were happy together, it was cute, just kind of overly so at times.

-

It was roughly an hour before the shop closed, and George had just about given up on keeping his eyes open for an extended period of time. He found himself wondering if he could get away with just putting his head down on the desk and drifting off for a while, because really, it was getting late now, most of the shoppers had gone home, and being a Tuesday, the town was hardly buzzing with life.

However, it was of course on the exact moment that George found himself seriously considering just doing so: letting his head fall down onto the counter and close his eyes, that the shop door opened. He took a moment to restrain himself from letting out a groan as a skinny, sort of just effortlessly pretty kind of girl made her way inside.

She gave George a small smile from where she stood, tucking a curly strand of her golden blonde hair behind her ear as it fell forward into her face when she turned her head. She seemed to be around George’s age, and the kind of pretty that made him want to start up some form of conversation with her, but George was getting tired, and she didn’t seem all that interested really.

George came to realise rather quickly that it appeared as if she was waiting for someone: peering impatiently out of the shop window, and then glancing back down at her phone with a troubled look on her face - held between a furrowed brow and pursed lips. He considered asking her if she was alright, disregarding what he’d previously told himself about making conversation with her, but it was just as he came to seriously consider it that she seemed to relax completely. 

A few seconds later, the door opened again, and this time a boy with curly hair that was sticking up in places, and rather skinny little limbs, stepped inside. It was immediately apparent that they knew one another, and George came to piece together that she’d been waiting for him or something like that. It really wasn’t his business, and there was really no point in him watching her, or the two of them anymore, but he found that there was just something in the boy’s appearance that had captivated him immediately.

George wasn’t at all sure how he had captivated him at all, and whether or not it really mattered all that much, but there was definitely something special about him. It was perhaps in the three daisies he had in his hair, half tied, half tucked in there messily, but somehow giving off a sense of beauty that George couldn’t quite explain. However, beyond the flowers in his hair, admittedly, there wasn’t all that much more to him - he was dressed in blue dungarees, had a few vaguely shitty looking tattoos across his arms that he might as well have done himself at home. He might have also been wearing a little bit of makeup, but with the distance between them, George couldn’t quite tell. 

George soon came to conclude, that it wasn’t just his appearance, but something about him as a whole that had captured his attention. He was just yet to pinpoint what that was exactly, before coming to accept that maybe he was just another pretty boy. He certainly wasn’t the first, and he certainly wouldn’t be the last. It was with that in mind that he turned his attention away from the two of them as they began to look around the shop, and went back to his laptop instead.

A good ten minutes passed before George found his attention brought back to the two: their conversation having grown loud enough for him to catch from the other end of the room.

“It’s bullshit though, Gemma.” The boy had been the first to raise his voice, leaning back against the wall beside the rack of clothes, arms folded across his chest as he watched the girl, Gemma, look over various items of clothing. “It is.” He went on to insist, Gemma seeming to take very little interest in what he had to say, and George came to wonder if he was paying him more attention than she was.

“You say everything you don’t personally like is bullshit.” It took a moment or two: the weight of his eyes glaring into her side from where he was stood, until Gemma finally found it within herself to respond. “Matty, come on, you burnt your toast this morning and you blamed that on capitalism-”

“Yes, but…” Matty began, stepping forward as he let out a sigh. “It  _ is _ . It’s the capitalist bullshit, it’s how they keep selling us broken products at higher prices, it’s how they keep the poor poorer and force them into a worse quality of life because the ones at the top of this all, at the top of this great pyramid, are benefitting from the suffering of everyone else. Your cheap broken toaster never works, because although it is possible to manufacture a fully functional toaster for the same price, the capitalist bullshit powering our society will keep selling us this broken shit, and it’s only going to get worse.”

“Or maybe…” Gemma trailed off, inhaling deeply as she seemed to begin to lose her patience, “you should just learn how to make a slice of toast without burning it? How about that?” She smiled at him, seeming not to be quite as fazed by what Matty had splurted out with as George found himself. “It’s just toast.”

Matty shook his head, walking away and glancing around the shop for a moment. “It’s not ‘just toast’, because it’s just  _ nothing _ . Everything contributes to everything else, we’re all tied into this great communal being that society is, and everything matters, everything contributes, and we need to change. Things  _ need _ to change. Society is bullshit. Money is bullshit. It’s a flawed system and we can’t keep up with it anymore.”

Gemma picked up a denim jacket off the rack, and made her way over to Matty, shaking her head slightly. “You’re not going to change the world. And you’re especially not going to change it by yelling about your toast in a secondhand shop.” She glanced across at George, who was watching the both of them with a sense of intrigue and captivation that he couldn’t quite explain, and tossed him a quick kind of apologetic smile.

“I’m not going to change anything by keeping silent, though.” He followed Gemma’s gaze up to George, and shot him an odd kind of look, as if he’d not yet come to notice him at all, or simply managed to forget that they weren’t alone in the midst of everything else. “I mean no offence, mate,” He began to talk to George more directly now, “but money is  _ bullshit _ . Business is bullshit.”

George just shrugged; he sort of had a point hidden down there underneath the mess of arrogance and self-righteousness. “Money is unfair - how we have people starving and then billionaires, but you’re not going to stop money from existing, nobody is.”

“You have a shop. You’re not supposed to agree with me.” Matty laughed at him, raising his eyebrows a little, as he walked over to the counter. Gemma just turned back to glancing around, hoping Matty’d know at least when to shut up. “What’s the point in supporting it all? Hypocrisy and all that?”

George sighed, leaning back in his chair. “It’s not my shop. My dad’s friend’s, I’m just here because it’s an easy job really. Not a bad way to spend my time.” He explained, not at all sure why he felt like he should, or why he felt like offering up his whole life to story to this random guy was at all necessary. George just hated the fact that it more than likely had something to do with the fact that he was pretty. He was an odd kind of pretty - iit was largely drowned out by the arrogance he conducted his every breath and move with, and of course the egotistical sense of self he wore like a crown, but it was prominent, still very much there.

“It’s bullshit, though, and you’re contributing to the bullshit. What is the point in supporting something you don’t believe in? You’re contributing, you’re supporting it all-”

George cut him off, shaking his head, and growing increasingly irritated, as pretty as Matty was, and as much as that seemed to matter in George’s head, because apparently he was pretty shallow. “The only thing I’m supporting is myself, because you know what? I’d rather be able to pay my rent. You thought of that?”

From the silence that followed, it appeared that perhaps Matty  _ hadn’t _ thought of that. However, as George had very much suspected, he found that the silence didn’t last for very long at all.

“Course I have.” Matty insisted, biting at his bottom lip. “Not just a fucking pretty face, you know?” He then turned back to Gemma, seeming to make a point out of being as indiscreet as possible. “Are you done so we can leave, or not?”

George rolled his eyes, leaning back in his chair, thinking back to how he’d viewed Matty when he’d first walked into the shop, and struggling to piece together how this was the same person. Of course, however, you could never judge people based solely off of their appearance.

“Matty, you’re being a dick.” Gemma told him, but proceeded to make her way over to the counter to pay. It was likely that she just wanted to get out of there before Matty decided that he was going to physically fight George or something like that, especially as George was something close to twice the size of him.

“I’m being  _ honest _ .” Matty made a point out of correcting her. “Honesty is important, honesty frees us from the bullshit. Who are we without honesty? We are nothing, we are useless society of nothing and bullshit and  _ lies _ -”

“Look.” George cut him off, taking a sharp intake of breath, meeting his gaze with an abrasive kind of look set deep within his eyes. “Just shut the fuck up, oh my god, just shut  _ up _ . You’re very pretty but every time you open your mouth you’re just fucking ruining it. Do yourself a favour, okay? Shut up.”

George wasn’t quite sure if Matty had actually come to listen to what he’d said, or if he’d just not been expecting anyone to speak back to him like that, but whatever it was, it left them in an astounding kind of silence. George took a moment to himself just to breathe, and perhaps calm down a little, before smiling and turning back to Gemma, and beginning to scan the tags on the clothes.

The silence remained unbroken as he finished the transaction, skipping the usual small talk and goodbyes he’d say to customers for the sake of being polite, as he was pretty certain that they’d gone past the state of politeness. George then proceeded to watch as they walked out of the shop; Matty seemed to have been taken down a notch or so, biting nervously at his fingernails as Gemma led him outside again. His eyes remained fixated on the two of them until they disappeared down the street and out of view of the shop window, and then, that was just that.

Just an asshole customer, because it wasn’t like George hadn’t experienced a few before. It had never been anything quite like this though, but it wasn’t that which kept George so fixated on the matter. Instead, there was just something about Matty - with flowers in his hair, and far too much to say - that just wouldn’t leave George’s mind.

Even as he closed up for the day, and made his way through town to meet Adam, ready to listen to a great and overly detailed description of his friend’s day, George couldn’t quite get Matty out of his mind. He wasn’t sure why or what it all could mean, if anything at all, or if it all just related back to the fact that he was pretty, and George couldn’t help imagine how things would have been if he hadn’t been such a dickhead. In the end, however, it didn’t matter all that much, because even as it plagued his mind for the remainder of that day, it would all fade out into nothingness soon enough. 

After all, nothing was ever permanent, nothing ever did last, and in time there’d be another pretty boy, and maybe that wouldn’t be quite so much of a dick. George could count on that, or at least, so he thought.

-

There was just no better way to spend a Friday evening than trudging through what wasn’t far off a rainstorm to make it back to your car and sit in traffic in the cold, because you can’t afford a car without broken heating, hoping maybe you’d get home before your flatmate ate all the pizza left over from last night. And, of course, George found himself absolutely blessed with the honour of being stuck in just that very situation.

It hadn’t been a bad day at all, especially in regards to the weather - it had been something resembling sunny and pleasant earlier around noon, something that might have even been convincing of the fact that it was actually summer. Of course, things had gone south pretty quickly, and as George had closed up the shop and attempted to make his way home, he’d come to wonder if, from the way the weather was looking, he’d stepped right back in time to November.

It wasn’t even summer rain - there was nothing pleasant or summery about it at all. It was bordering on being sleet: unpleasantly cold, and certainly anything but expected, let alone wanted. That was just George’s luck, though, wasn’t it? He’d have something to grumble to Adam about later though. He could even use it as an excuse to blackmail him into being nice to him for a while, because George was a lovely person like that. It was questionable as to whether it would work, but George found that convincing himself of its brilliance as an idea held the best hopes of getting him through the rainy streets and down to the carpark with a sound state of mind.

The rain had come near enough to be the most exciting part of George’s week - what had happened on Tuesday melting away in the back of his mind, soon to become nothingness and faces he could no longer recall. Tuesday night had gone on to end with George getting a little drunker than he’d anticipated on doing, and had then led to Wednesday morning leaving him to tell himself that it had nothing to do with with what had happened in the shop. By Thursday, however, nearly every thought of the encounter had vanished.

It was his sister’s birthday in a week, and he’d turned to Ellie for advice in what girls actually wanted to receive as gifts. She’d told him that he was being sexist for thinking that she’d want anything different just because she was a girl, to which George had apologised, and she’d taken him out to feel out of place and confused as she pointed at various pieces of overly expensive makeup that his sister might like. And then vaguely pretty Laura had started texting him again.

Things had happened, the world had moved on, George had moved on, finding that he hadn’t spared a single thought for Matty for two days now, because as pretty as he was, as much of a dick as he was, he just didn’t matter.

The rain only worsened as George made it towards the carpark, almost as if it was determined to thoroughly soak him and generally ruin his day as much as possible before he could get to the safety of his car. It was a shitty little thing, painted a shade of dark blue - not the worst colour it could have been, but by no means the best. It had been fairly cheap however, and got him from place to place successfully. So it did its job, and George was happy with that.

The skies had very quickly turned a rather unpleasant shade of grey - the kind that seemed to yell foreboding. The very same grey reflected upon on the town, dulling everything else down into similar shades of grey. Even the trees to the side of the pavement looked somewhat limp and washed out, despite having once held the life in this particular pathway through town. George wondered how such a shade of vibrant green - full of life, meaning and passion, and perhaps everything someone might aspire or simply despise to be, could fade out into something resembling a shadow of itself, and only in a matter of days. That was the thing though, some things just never made sense, they just happened, and as far as George was concerned, it wasn’t his place to question them.

He kept his eyes on the trees until he reached his car, finding his attention captured in the world around him, and the ever looming presence of change. It was only as he really felt the rain worsen however, that he came to move with more urgency to his car. It was as he did so, that his attention came to be drawn to something else: a small, skinny figure of a person, sat shivering on the curb.

The white shirt he was wearing was evidently too big for him, and fell most of the way down his thighs, which George couldn’t help but feel were awfully skinny: fitting badly inside the pair of ripped black jeans he wore. As George continued to look, he came to notice his hand stretched out in front of him, holding a cigarette, which was seeming to wash away somewhat in the rain, as it was held loosely between two similarly skinny fingers.

George found that his attention was immediately drawn to him, likely in concern, or just down to something he was yet to explain. He didn’t quite have time to contemplate just which of the two it was before the boy’s head turned, as if he’d felt the presence of George’s gaze on him. It was with that, which the two came to lock eyes.

Then the moment of understanding came. It came for the both of them: for George, and for Matty, because that’s who the boy sat on the curb was, no question about it. 

First of all, George couldn’t help but feel somewhat stumped by the contrast between the sad, lost look in his eyes, the way his body seemed to shake all over with the cold, and the loudmouthed arrogant dickhead he’d found himself acquainted with just a few days before. It was that which left him unable to look away.

As a minute passed, and the two still found themselves sharing the company of one another’s gaze, George came to conclude that this was the part where he pulled himself together, got out of the rain, into his car, and went home, but despite himself, and despite everything he should know and do, there was something within him: a certain kind of misplaced sympathy for Matty. He just seemed to be so differently portrayed than he had been before, and in that, there was just this part of George that didn’t want to leave him out there in the rain and in the cold alone.

George would have liked to think that he’d brush it off, get past it, get in his car, and get home. He’d get back to his life, get back home and wrap his sister’s birthday present, well try to, and end up fucking it up and ask Adam to do it for him. He’d get back and text Laura, vaguely pretty Laura who he’d only ever seen a few times - he’d get back and maybe spend some time with her again. He’d get back and spend tomorrow doing something, maybe getting stoned with someone - maybe Ellie.

Maybe he would have been able to do that. Maybe there was a whole alternate reality in which he’d turned away and did just that, but the thing was, there was something in Matty’s eyes: sad, apologetic, and lost, that was pleading ‘I’m sorry’ over and over again. There was something about him that was wrong, and George couldn’t shake the feeling that he just wasn’t in the state where he could be left out there alone. It was with that, with the beginning of the third minute they spent holding one another’s gaze, that George gave in and let himself make a stupid kind of decision. It had been a while since his last big fuck up, after all.

It was on the rationale of decency and kindness that George came to approach Matty. It didn’t take him long to reach the curb that Matty remained sat on: curled up in on himself. It took him longer to think of what to say, as he remained in silence, in fear of himself and the consequence of this all.

“Are you okay, Matty?” George eventually came to ask, leaning down slightly in an attempt to retain his gaze.

Matty looked up, a little in shock. It was as if he’d completely missed the minutes they spent staring at one another. All in all, he didn’t seem quite with it: a little lost up inside himself, and spacing out again as he focused in on George’s face. There was something in his eyes that confirmed that he did indeed recognise George, but George couldn’t quite distinguish as to what that meant to him.

Matty shook his head in response before, burying it back down into his knees, and letting his cigarette fall between his fingers and onto the tarmac. George remained a little unsure as to quite what he should do - the thing was that he’d found himself at the point where walking away and going home just wasn’t an option anymore. It was as he came to admit it, that he put Matty’s cigarette out with the toe of his shoe, and reached his hand out towards him.

Matty seemed reluctant, or perhaps just yet to acknowledge it, and with that, George couldn’t help but feel awkwardly kind of uncomfortable, desperate to say something, desperate to make sense of this, of everything, of what Matty had been before, and what had led him to this. There were a thousand questions he could ask, but he refrained from every one, keeping his lips shut, and instead reaching out and curling his fingers in around Matty’s wrist. It was then that Matty let George pull him to his feet, stumbling a little as he did so, and as much as George was hesitant about the idea, he reached out and let Matty fall into his side, supporting him under his shoulder as the two made it back through the rain to George’s car.

In all honesty, George didn’t know what else to do other than take him home. After all, getting him out of the rain was probably for the best. George, himself, had also gotten halfway drenched in all of this, but as he helped Matty into the passenger seat, then proceeding to get in himself, he felt a horrible pang of guilt in his chest at the notion of driving off; the notion of driving home to other things, and writing Matty back off.

George leaned back in his seat for a moment, attempting to fix his hair the best he could before turning to Matty, who sat beside him, seemingly very focused on breathing: eyes distant, fixated off somewhere outside the car. However, as George continued to watch him, he found that their eyes came to meet once more.

“T-thanks.” Matty’s tone seemed so vastly different from what it had been a few days ago, suddenly so quiet and so  _ scared _ . George couldn’t deny that in the space of a few days,  _ something _ had happened, but he had to admit that as much as he suddenly felt himself concerned with Matty and his state of mind, it just wasn’t his business. Matty wasn’t his friend - they didn’t even like one another. He was just another pretty boy, pretty even now, as George sat there, looking an awful lot like a drenched rat.

“Should I take you home?” George eventually came to ask, glancing back outside to see the rain worsen: thundering down onto the windows and falling down them in streams of little droplets.

Matty let out a sigh, moving so he stretched his feet up onto the dashboard. The gesture was so much more ‘arrogant, everything is bullshit Matty’, and in a weird way, it had George just that little bit more at ease. “No.” He declared, tone mirroring his posture.

“No?” George repeated, suddenly very unsure as to quite what he was supposed to do now. “What do you want me to do-”

“You can take me to Gemma’s if you want.” Matty gestured vaguely with his hands as he spoke. “I don’t mind.”

“Why not home?” George found the question escaping his lips before he could think twice about it. He considered apologising, taking it back, but this was still Matty, this was still the same Matty who had been such a dickhead on Tuesday, and he couldn’t let himself forget that.

“Don’t have a home.” Matty’s tone seemed far too nonchalant, far too at ease, far too comfortable in contrast with his statement, and with that, George couldn’t help feel a little uneasy. “I’m staying with Gemma, it’s fine, don’t look at me like that.”

“Like what?” George stumbled over his words, suddenly feeling the Matty he’d been familiar with taking control again.

“Like you know shit, because you don’t know shit about me - you fucking don’t, and you know that? Like who the fuck are we? No one, we’re no one to each other.” Matty turned to George, looking him dead in the eyes. “I don’t even know your name. You’re just some fucking  _ guy. _ ”

George came to the rather sudden realisation that no, Matty didn’t. “It’s George, by the way.” Matty gave a nod, not seeming to care much either way. “I just wanted to make sure you were alright.”

“Thought you wanted me to shut up.” Matty raised his voice, glaring across at him. “Thought you might have been able to figure out what you want, seeming as you know everything, and I’m so  _ wrong _ -”

“I can  _ not _ drive you to Gemma’s.” George cut him off, meeting him with a slightly less pleasant kind of look, and Matty’s demeanour seemed to fade out a little after that.

“You don’t have to.” Matty came to speak a few moments later, his voice once more much softer, as he returned to watch the raindrops hit the window pane. “I’d like it if you did, though.”

George nodded, biting his lip for a moment. “Would you maybe tell me what’s happened to you? You don’t  _ have _ to.” George came to repeat just what Matty had said prior. “I’d like it if you did, though.”

Matty let out a sigh, stretching back out against the seat. “I’ll give you the abridged version - did a bit of a coke. More than a bit. Had a fight with Gemma. Things are shit. Things are always shit. Did a bit more coke. Then it started raining.”

“Wouldn’t have put you down for cocaine.” George couldn’t help but comment on that instantly, feeling how he immediately began to view Matty differently, and hating that, because maybe, in this all, it just wasn’t his fault.

“I’m not a fucking junkie, though.” Matty insisted, meeting George’s eyes, and coming to raise his voice. “I’m not. It’s just when shit gets really bad.” He let out a sigh. “Gem doesn’t want me to do it at all. And she’s right, because of course she’s right. She’s Gemma, after all.”

“So you had a fight because she found out that you had?” George quickly grew just that little bit more comfortable with asking. A voice, however, remained at the back of his mind, asking just whether he really believed that Matty wasn’t a junkie or not.

“Something else as well.” Matty bit at his fingernails, shaking his head a little as he came to recall just exactly what it had been. “She’ll let me back in, though - she’s nice. Too nice for me. I’m an asshole, I guess we’ve gathered that.”

“I didn’t mean-”

Matty rolled his eyes, shaking his head. “I don’t care. Doesn’t fucking matter. If we were all up in everything everyone thinks about us then there’d be nothing left of us, don’t you think?”

“I want to say that maybe I misjudged you.” George avoided his question, his tone stern, suddenly hesitant to back away from it all.

“No, I’m usually that much of a dick.” Matty promised him, pulling his knees up onto the seat. What Matty didn’t expect though, was for George to just laugh. A proper laugh, with smiles and everything. “What?” He retorted, looking George over - suddenly not at all sure what to make of him.

“Doesn’t matter.” George sighed, thinking for a moment, turning another terrible kind of thought over in his mind for a while. “Hey… uhh? Would it be alright if I gave you my number?”

Matty widened his eyes at that, seeming to be the last thing he’d come to expect - really, George could see where he was coming from. “What? You’ve decided that maybe that my looks outweigh my personality? Some bullshit like that? That’d maybe you’d go for me anyway?”

George couldn’t help but blush a little, but came to make the quite the point out of shaking his head. “I’m a bit worried about you.” 

Matty scoffed, shaking his head in disbelief. “Seriously. I’m not saying you have to talk to me or whatever, that’s not what I’m saying at all, we have entirely different lives, okay? We’re different people, but what I’m saying is that if you ever need my help or whatever, you can call me. If you need me to pick you up or something like that? You can call me.”

“Are you saying this just because I’m pretty?” Matty rolled his eyes, but proceeded to take his phone out anyway, passing it to George to put his number into.

“No.” George’s face gave way to a smile. “Don’t get full of yourself - you’re not  _ that _ pretty.”

“Oh come on.” Matty shook his head, taking his phone back. “If I wasn’t that pretty, I’d just be an asshole. And who gives their number out to assholes?”

George turned to Matty, letting out a sigh. “Me, apparently.”

~

In the few weeks that had passed, Matty found his life slowly curving back around into what he might call normal. In Matty’s mind, though, ‘normal’ was of course, bullshit. As most things were.

Gemma had taken him back in that Friday night, she’d give him a questioning look, which eventually had grown into a series of questions themselves. Matty had been hesitant about answering them, something inside him holding him back from telling her exactly what had brought him back home, and exactly how that was the guy from the shop a few days ago - the very one that Matty had managed to piss off to a whole new extent. The one named George.

In the end, Gemma did never really learn what had happened in full throughout the course of that Friday, but as time came to pass, she came to accept that there were would always be things about Matty that she wouldn’t know. That Friday night had simply gone over to join the others in their hundreds. Or thousands, perhaps.

The shadow of himself that Matty had let slip through it all, on the one night that  _ George _ happened to notice him, had now faded out into the version of himself that Matty was much more comfortable with. Fucking George. He didn’t mean a thing at all, not anymore, not as the days turned into weeks, and his number remained unused, hidden away at the back of Matty’s phone. 

Of course, it wasn’t like George had insisted that they texted everyday, and Matty was okay with that, and in some regard, a little comforted by the presence of his number, by the opportunity, if things ever came down to it, but as things were looking, they just wouldn’t end up like that. And that was okay, Matty as had assured himself. He just hated the fact that it took some convincing.

Matty, however, wasn’t exactly the best judge of anything at all, because he was certainly sure that when he was younger he wouldn’t find himself technically homeless at nineteen, but here he was now, sleeping on Gemma’s sofa for far too long now. 

Gemma was nice. It was better than the alternatives, and Matty sometimes doubted that he really deserved her company, let alone her kindness, but Gemma was nice, and she seemed to like him for one reason or another, despite everything else, and Matty just didn’t feel as if he was in a position to question that.

The two had met a few years ago - when they were fifteen. Gemma had been the new girl at school, the kind of pretty one that instantly caught everyone’s attention. Matty had seemed to make somewhat of a point about not giving the slightest shit about her, yet somehow in this all, they’d ended up wrapped in one hell of a mess together. Matty couldn’t quite explain it himself - he was sure that Gemma hadn’t liked him when he was fifteen, and telling her to fuck off when she’d asked him for cigarette, and he was sure that Gemma still couldn’t be too fond of him at all, when they were nineteen, and he continued to tell her to fuck off, in response to just about everything. He stopped meaning it that much though, at some point down the line. Perhaps that was just where things had changed.

Perhaps she just felt sorry for him. Perhaps she was secretly one of those good people that you end up hearing all too much about. Perhaps, either way, Matty didn’t give all that much of a fuck. Or perhaps he did, but perhaps that lay, with the thousands of others, as one of those things that he couldn’t quite bring himself to voice.

Matty had a very sure idea of what person he had to be, and it was self-deprecating little questions like that which held no place in the ideal version of himself. It was the one he’d painted up in lights at the forefront of his mind, and indeed the very one that bore so very little resemblance to what was left of his genuine self, that he’d locked up away inside his head. The thing however, with Matty’s very sure ideas about things, were that they certainly were not subject to change. Not in Matty’s mind, at least.

Gemma lived in a tiny one bedroom flat on the outskirts of town, awfully close to the shittiest neighbourhood in town, but honestly, it wasn’t too bad, all in all. It was by no means the nicest of places to live, but it was comfortable, even with all the furniture shoved too close together, and the odd crack or dent in the walls. Even with the creaky, horrible floorboards, and an off white, chipped paint on the walls, there was just something comforting about it: homely in spite of itself - perhaps homely  _ to _ spite itself, and perhaps it was that which had Matty so drawn to the place, and indeed that, which kept him around.

He didn’t  _ live _ there, not properly, he just sort of vaguely inhabited the place a sizeable amount of the time. It was somewhere he’d let himself be dragged back to - it was a familiar space, somewhere comfortable, somewhere warm, somewhere else to let himself waste away in spite of himself. Somewhere to sleep some nights, when things got colder, and when he hadn’t ended up elsewhere after letting himself getting wasted and letting people convince him to do slightly questionable things. A lot of people had sofas, after all, a lot of people had shitty little flats, after all. Perhaps it wasn’t just the sofa, or the flat, or the convenience, that made him stay, but Matty had never really been one for admitting things to himself.

Come half nine on a Saturday morning, Matty found himself struggling to keep his eyes open, and in turn, struggling to pinpoint just why he’d felt the need to do so in the first place. It was early - too early - Saturday morning early, and the sun was too bright, and not bright enough all at the same time, and the breeze coming in through the window, he’d accidentally left open the night before, was cold - all too much and all too little at the same time. He turned his head over, burying his face into a cushion, and wishing the world away from him in an odd kind of desperate, muffled, half spoken, half thought plea.

He managed to escape the world for a little while longer, hiding away under closed eyelids and the guise of sleep, as the sun rose in the sky, hitting the flat with a warm kind of summery glow - something that felt worthy of the time of year, something that was perhaps worthy of waking up to see. Of course, only if Matty hadn’t seen the sun not far off just a thousand in times in his life before. 

It was only with the sound of footsteps and the closing of a door that Matty began to stir, turning over, and forcing his eyes open once as Gemma made her way over to the kitchen. She returned just a minute or so later with two mugs of tea, placing one down on the coffee table in front of Matty, and grasping her own in her hands as she sat down at the other end of the sofa that Matty had curled up on.

“You made me tea.” Matty noted, stretching out into what could only be a more uncomfortable position.

“Yeah.” Gemma gave a nod, sipping at her own mug, stretching out and putting her feet up on the coffee table. 

Matty sat up, yawning, and then attempted to fix his hair to some degree: brushing stubborn curls, which had stuck up at all angles, back down and behind his ears with his fingers. He rubbed his eyes, stretching out against the back of the horrible mustard coloured sofa. He then turned back to look at Gemma, sending her a somewhat apprehensive kind of look as he glanced between her and the mug.

“What?” She came to ask, meeting Matty with wide, sleepy eyes, that still in all their earnest, couldn’t quite disguise the glimmer of something else hidden behind this all. “I’ve not  _ poisoned _ it.” She broke into a laugh, gesturing to the cup of tea, so far untouched on the coffee table, with her eyes.

“Maybe that would have been better.” Matty gave a shrug, still a little hesitant in regards to the whole situation, and what was likely to come of him approaching it, but regardless, he came to reach forward and take the mug of tea into his hands. He then curled back up on the sofa, sipping at it slowly.

“Matty, you’re being a dick.” Gemma told him rather cooly. The act didn’t do much to faze either of them. As always, Matty was quite aware of just when he was and when he wasn’t overstepping the line. It was just as always, Matty was yet to find something that might cause him to care, and to think twice about doing so.

“You’re being too nice to me.” Matty explained, although, it was hardly much of an explanation on its own. “So you have something you want to say - but you’re too scared to say it. Too scared of what’s going to happen, because it’s going to be something that pisses me off.” Matty shot her a look: suddenly impatient and viciously so. “So cut the bullshit, Gem, just tell me.”

Gemma let out a sigh, leaning forward and placing her tea back down on the coffee table, taking a moment to remind herself as just to how much of a dick Matty was, and would always be. Perhaps, however, he wasn’t so much of a mean person, just blunt - incredibly so. Or perhaps he was, but the fact of the matter was that he meant a great deal to her - regardless of what he perhaps was or wasn’t.

“It’s Mother’s Day next weekend.” Gemma just came out with it, letting Matty put the pieces together for himself, daring to watch as his face suddenly grew pale.

“And what does that mean?” Matty snorted, brushing a hell of a something off, as he turned back to Gemma, his eyes even seeming to hold something vaguely comedic about this all. “What does that mean? It’s just a  _ day _ .”

“I know it’s just a day.” Gemma muttered, turning to Matty with an agitated kind of look in her eyes - one that neither of the two had particularly come to anticipate. “But you know. You should call her - your mum.”

Matty shrugged, throwing his gaze off to the corner of the room. “Doesn't matter what you think I  _ should _ do. The whole idea of moral obligation is bullshit. It’s fucking bullshit. So’s Mother’s Day - it means nothing, it’s just commercialisation, it’s just bullshit, and marketing and capitalism, and pink pieces of card with same generic message inside - it’s meaningless. It’s all fucking meaningless.” Matty’s tone soon grew sour, uncomfortably so, as he raised his voice, and turned his head to shoot Gemma an unnecessary kind of spiteful look. “Like it fucking matters.” He shook his head.

Gemma couldn’t help but let out a sigh, knowing too well of the argument she’d cause with all of this, but the fact of the matter was that there were just some things she had to say, and regardless of Matty’s attitude, of his particularly ignorant, finely tuned worldview, this was one of them. “It doesn’t matter if  _ you _ think getting your mum a card and maybe some fucking flowers, or you know maybe just ringing her up is a whole load of meaningless bullshit. The fact of this all is that it’s going to mean a whole load more than doing nothing.”

Matty rolled his eyes, putting his mug of tea back onto the coffee table, turning to fold his arms across his chest in a manner that couldn’t help but scream childish. “I’m not doing it. It doesn’t really fucking matter - not at all, not really. What’s a piece of fucking pink folded paper do to change anything?”

“It’s not the card itself - it’s the thought, the sentiment-”

“Well, looks like I’m all out of fucking kindness and sentiment, doesn’t it?” Matty raised his voice, getting up from the sofa. “That’s just one hell of a fucking shame, isn’t it?”

“You know what?” Gemma began, raising her voice to much the same level. “Shut the fuck up and get out of your own fucking ass for just one fucking minute to think about someone else, think about some other than you on this planet for one fucking minute? You’re not that special, you’re no better than the rest of us and you need to get to fucking grips with yourself.”

“I never said I was special.” Matty snapped, making his way towards the door. “I just have shit that I’m not afraid to say.”

“Matty.” Gemma shot Matty what was now a pleading look as he stood by the door, pulling his boots on. “Just fucking call her.  _ Please _ .”

“Why?” Matty scoffed, shaking his head. “What’s the fucking point? It’s not like she doesn’t have another son.” And with that, Matty slammed the flat door behind him, headed out for god knows where. He was just headed somewhere where he didn’t have to think, especially not about his family, and bullshit kind of things that he  _ should _ have done.

-

Matty wasn’t there to argue that it had been one of his best days, but there was definitely that stubbornness within him that came to vouch for it meaning something at all. It hadn’t been the worst, it hadn’t been the best, but despite the kind of thoughts running rampant through his head, he hadn’t come to rely on his less than favourable coping mechanisms. Or at least, he hadn’t gone and snorted any cocaine - not quite yet anyway. He’d smoked a pack of cigarettes in the space of a few hours, along with a sizeable amount of weed, but that was besides the point.

He’d spent a few hours on some guy’s sofa. He’d been called James, but that didn’t really matter all that much. Matty had originally just come for the weed, but he’d found himself rather reluctant to get up and leave after a while. Of course, in the end, he’d gotten kicked out, and found himself walking aimlessly around town for a while, looking for someone to talk to, something to give a fuck about.

It was later that day, coming around to two in the afternoon, and Matty found himself down at the park, sat before a cluster of trees on the outskirts of the grass. He sat with a bottle of cheap off brand vodka by his side - something he’d taken on his way out of James’ shitty little shed of a house, without asking, of course, because Matty was just kind and considerate like that. He hadn’t made much of a start on it, and in his own admittance, he didn’t much care for vodka, because there really was no avoiding the fact that it fucking tasted like shit. But then again, who drank vodka for the taste?

He was well aware of how much of a sight he looked: bags under his eyes, yesterday’s clothes, hair still sticking up in all of sorts of places, and sat alone with a bottle of vodka to himself at the beginning of the afternoon. To top it all off, he was sat just metres away from the kids park, from happy families, toddlers, and mothers of three eyeing him cautiously from where they sat with pushchairs and baby bottles and all kinds of  _ bullshit _ . Matty didn’t much care for them judging him, as after all, he was coming to judge himself, coming to reassess just where he was in life, as the high started to drift off, and everything just turned that awkward kind of sour.

He reckoned he could fix it with a drink, but as he sat and thought, he couldn’t deny that he didn’t much care for getting drunk, at least not in his current circumstances, at least not alone - at least not alone and sad in a public park on a Saturday afternoon. He came to conclude that he’d likely feel a little better in someone else’s presence, someone to bitch to, someone to lose himself in - anyone really - someone to share the vodka so he didn’t look like such a pathetic waste of space to that one particular mother with dark brown hair that seemed rather unwilling to take her eyes off him. Even if Matty was as bad of a person as she likely thought him to be, he still wouldn’t have made the effort to get up and stab her kids all the way at the other end of the park, in the ten seconds that she’d neglect glaring at him, as she likely thought him capable of.

As the minutes ticked past, and Matty found himself weighing up various possibilities in his head: each perfectly viable ways to waste away an afternoon, to let himself fade out of everything until things came back to normal, until Gemma stopped bothering him, until Mother’s Day passed, and they went back to forgetting, and not speaking about the things that they both knew weren’t to be spoken about. Matty never did doubt that it was unhealthy, but Matty never did doubt the fact that he just didn’t fucking care.

It was as he drew close to turning a bad day into one of his worst, that he came to give up, give up on his pride, give up on holding the gaze of a middle aged mother of three for the pure hell of it, and turn to his phone, checking through his notifications to find a few texts from Gemma - something to make a point out of ignoring, as he scrolled through his contacts in search of someone who could come and sit bitterly with him and maybe get more drunk than they should be for the time of day.

The issue in this was simply that a good half of the people in his contacts were people he didn’t actually like all that much, and they were of course out of the question. Then of the half that remained, a good half of them were more so Gemma’s friends than his, and the kind of people she’d have told all about what had happened that morning, leaving them with very little to say to him that Gemma hadn’t already detailed as he’d left. There were a few people he considered, although he was sure that the half of them had much better things to do with their Saturdays, and Matty came to realise very quickly that he really didn’t have much in the way of anyone just to waste time away with.

Everyone asked questions, and everyone knew Gemma, and everyone didn’t really give that much of a shit about Matty, at least not nearly as much as they might say that they did. It was as Matty came to conclude that he’d pretty much ran out of options, that he happened upon George’s contact saved in his phone.

He hadn’t spared him much in the way of thought at all over the past few weeks, but as he sat there in the park, staring at the name displayed on his screen, that Friday night and everything he’d said came back to him like a slap across the face, and in this all, Matty came to accept that although he might not particularly care for George, he was perhaps his best bet under the circumstances, and of course, what was life if it wasn’t for badly made decisions?

It was with that in mind, which Matty typed out a message to him, not even bothering to wonder if tall, somewhat annoying, George, from the secondhand shop several weeks ago, could even remember who Matty was anymore. Maybe he drove home lots of people he found sat feeling sorry for themselves in the corner of parking lots - maybe he’d made quite the habit of it, but maybe, Matty just didn’t care enough to think that through before pressing send.

-

With a few badly worded text messages, and fifteen minutes having passed, Matty came to spot an irrefutably George shaped figure making its way over the horizon. Now having downed just a bit of the bottle of vodka, perhaps just to pass the time as he waited, Matty concluded that inviting George to spend time with him was better than the alternative, which was of course sitting around and spending time regretting the decision he’d made to involve him in his life again in the first place.

“No offence, but you look like shit.” George chose what was evidently the kindest greeting he could muster as he sat down beside Matty, stretching his legs out across the grass, and taking a moment to glance over at the vodka, perhaps questioning it for a moment or two, but coming to conclude that asking about it perhaps wasn’t so much worth his while.

“Well…” Matty let out a sigh, finding that in all honesty, he didn’t know quite what to say in response to that, because for a start, George was right, and he saw no way around that. “Nice to see you too.”

George let out a snort, watching as Matty rolled his eyes, turning his gaze over towards the skyline, fixating on the way the sky folded into the world: the two joining one another like there was never any separation between them, and yet, of course, despite this all, the two were so very much apart.

“Are you going to tell me what’s wrong? Are you going to let me ask what’s wrong? Or are you going to just tell me how everything is bullshit, or are we just going to sit in silence, or make comments about how shit we both look?” George came to ask, cutting everything in two just as the silence had seemed to settle in around them comfortably.

“You don’t look shit at all.” Matty looked up at George, noting that, admittedly, his hair was kind of messy, but the kind of messy that seemed as if it might have been somewhat intentional. He definitely however, looked as if he’d put a bit of effort into putting together an outfit that day. Unlike Matty. “There’d be no point in that, and then I could sit in silence by myself so what would be the point in bothering you for that?” 

He finally thought to maybe stop staring at George, just for a little while - the guy was good looking but that didn’t detract from the fact that Matty had already made a decision  _ not _ to like him. Still, however, he found himself choosing to spend time with him, but admittedly, he hadn’t had much in the way of choice.

“So I guess you’re going for bullshit, then?” George tossed him a hesitant, awkward looking smile. “What could it possibly be that has ruined your entire worldview today?” He let out a half-hearted, breathy kind of laugh.

What caught George entirely by surprise however, was the way that, suddenly, out of nowhere, Matty just shook his head. “Ask me what’s wrong.” 

George was a little thrown by the way Matty had come to phrase his request, and in turn, found himself hesitant in obliging without question. “What? So you can tell me to fuck off and feel better about yourself?”

Matty rolled his eyes, shooting George the kind of look that he felt ought to be accompanied by a ‘fuck off’ or a middle finger at least, but there was something about Matty that didn’t seem up to it. In fact, George very quickly came to recognise the Matty he found before him to be some sort of awkward mix between the Matty he had first met on that Tuesday, and the Matty he had driven home that Friday night.

“Maybe. I don’t know.” Matty gave a shrug, his eyes straying over to the bottle of vodka beside him, and without a moment’s thought, because Matty was nothing if not for rash decisions, brought it up to his lips and took a swig. He grimaced, doing his best to swallow it the quickest he could.

It was then that George let himself fall into an awkward kind of giggle, not really sure if it at all appropriate, and not really sure if he at all meant it. “So…” He began, taking the bottle from Matty’s hand and taking a drink himself, face mirroring Matty’s as he placed it back down on the ground between them. “What exactly is it that’s wrong?”

“Hard to pin it down to one exact thing, if I’m quite honest.” Matty stretched out, letting himself fall back onto the grass, coming to watch the white wisps of clouds traverse the great expanse of blue sky - it was almost too blue, and yet not quite blue enough.

George watched Matty for a moment - skinny little arms behind his head, and legs bent upwards at the knee, but of course, in all of that, George couldn’t help but focus on the way Matty’s shirt had ridden up slightly and exposed the pale skin of his hips. In George’s defense, Matty was still awfully pretty, regardless of everything else.

“What about today?” It was a good minute or so before George managed to focus on something that wasn’t Matty’s hipbones, and really just how low his jeans were riding on them. “What was it today?” He moved closer to Matty, ending up half sitting, half lying there on his side, facing Matty.

There was a brief moment in which Matty’s eyes flickered away from the sky, from the rest of the world, from everything else, and settled on George. It was a brief moment, but it was a moment they shared, and a moment that seemed, despite itself, to hold all the power in the world.

There was something. It was an odd kind of something - the very same something that George had felt initially that very first Tuesday, but it was now something that Matty could feel too, or at least he’d finally shut up long enough to pay attention to. There was no denying that it was something different, something special, but Matty was hesitant to label it anything but the bad kind of special: something he couldn’t understand, or something he just didn’t want to.

“Had an argument with Gemma.” Matty began, turning his attention back up to the sky, taking a moment to wonder why he was telling George this, and in turn wonder why he hadn’t just deleted George’s number in the first place. He couldn’t help but pin it down to the very same something that Matty was so hesitant to put a name or any kind of characteristics to.

“Oh…” George began, his eyes giving way and letting slip notion of the whirlwind of assumptions he was quick to make in his mind. “Was it do with… cocaine?” George couldn’t help but hush his voice a little as he asked. Matty couldn’t help but laugh, turning on his side to face George, and to George’s great disappointment, and relief, his shirt falling back down to properly cover his stomach. “What?” George blushed, desperate to avert Matty’s gaze, but he found himself with no such success in the matter.

“Told you.” Matty’s tone grew a little bitter. “Not a junkie.” He held George’s gaze with a degree of stubbornness: an arrogant insistence that perfectly characterised Matty as a whole. “Not everything in my life’s about bloody cocaine.”

“I…” George stumbled to recall the details of what Matty had told him that one Friday, that to the both of them, just seemed so distant now. “You said you had an argument with her over it then, so I  _ assumed _ . Sorry.” He flashed Matty an awkward kind of apologetic smile, that Matty did try  _ not _ to roll his eyes at, but in the end, didn’t quite succeed in doing so.

“She gets pissed at me for other things too.” Matty assured him, pulling his gaze elsewhere, following his fingers down to the blades of grass he had entangled between them. “I mean, hard not to, isn’t it? I’m quite the colossal dickhead.” George couldn’t hold back a snort, and with a flicker of his eyes up towards him, Matty soon broke into laughter. 

All in all, it was quite the odd situation, because suddenly they were smiling, properly…  _ grinning _ at each other, and there was something inside Matty’s chest that wasn’t quite so insistent upon disliking George anymore. He never second guessed himself; he relied on instinct, kept to himself and his own judgement. If he didn’t like someone - he  _ didn’t like someone _ , and he knew that early on. That was how it had always been, and there was nothing inside Matty that viewed change in much of a positive light, but suddenly there was something different, and honestly, Matty didn’t quite know what to think.

He took a moment to combat his whole worldview tumbling on itself in the presence of George, who maybe wasn’t so much of a dickhead as Matty had once thought that he was; George, with the pretty smile, and nice hair. Somehow so much prettier than he’d been that last Tuesday, and that Friday too.

He found himself holding the words so carefully - poised between his lips, running them through his mind for the hundredth time, but there was just something within him that couldn’t do it, and perhaps for the first time in his life, Matty found himself with a real lack of something to say. He dared not admit it, but there was something, deep inside his chest, something he’d done his best to lock away and hide, but something determined to show its face again - determined to speak of fear, the awful kind of fear that George would react the same as Gemma, and that he’d find himself so very alone, back to the bottle of vodka, and back wasting an afternoon up inside his own head.

“You don’t have to.” George seemed to sense Matty’s hesitance, eyeing him with the kind of concern that Matty would vouch for the fact that he didn’t deserve. “We can talk about something else.” George suggested, watching the way Matty instantly seemed to calm, and finding himself not at all sure what to think of him at all. “I’ll tell you about my day, if you want?”

Matty gave a shrug, admittedly not all that bothered about whatever the fuck George had done with himself for the past few hours, but so very bothered about his voice, and the calm way that he spoke, so slowly and gently, but not as if he was scared of setting Matty off, because Matty had come to accept that George really had no qualms with arguing with him. He spoke this way for something else. Perhaps for that very same  _ something  _ that Matty felt. Or perhaps not.

“I woke up at like noon, I spent last night at my friends Ross and John’s house, so I woke up in the middle of their living room, little bit hungover, only a little bit though - I’m alright now. Made myself a sandwich at theirs, and well I discovered the horror that is the fact that they stick post it notes to items of food in their fridge.” Matty raised his eyebrows, failing to see what was quite so extraordinary about that - a little weird, perhaps, but whatever. “It’s what they write on them, though, and like I read one, on the ham, it was like ‘ _ I need this for my lunch on Thursday’ _ but then it’s like  _ ‘If you eat it all I’m not touching your dick for two weeks. Lots of love Ross xxx’ _ .” It was then that Matty couldn’t prevent himself from bursting into a fit of laughter. 

“Honestly, that is  _ traumatising _ when you just wake up and just want a sandwich. Maybe I should have just left it at that, but there were sticky notes on practically every item of food in the entire fucking fridge, and you know how you shouldn’t look at something and it’s like your brain just wants to fuck with you? I ended up reading a lot, and honestly I wasn’t sure they could ever get any more disgusting, but they really do out do everyone’s expectations.” George let out a sigh, shaking his head as he came to recall what more there had been to the morning. 

Matty couldn’t help but find himself much more interested by the details of George’s life than he anticipated being, waiting with wide eyes as George continued. “Then my friend Ellie started texting me about this girl she hooked up with last night, and honestly I was still traumatised from the sticky notes and I needed to recover, so I went home and just went to sleep for a bit more, then you texted me, and I got scared that maybe Ross had noticed that I’d moved his ham and wanted to hunt me down for knowing their disgusting secrets, so really, this was a welcome surprise.”

Matty paused for a moment, running George’s words through his mind. “Are all your friends gay?” He asked, genuinely not coming to mean anything by it, but still it caught George by surprise.

“Not  _ all _ of them. I have quite a few, I mean. I’m bi, so that makes sense. My flatmate, though, Adam, he’s straight. Ellie’s bi as well.” George turned to Matty, raising his eyebrows slightly. “Why do you ask?”

Matty shrugged, snorting a little. “Honestly, don’t give a shit who your friends are fucking, just thought it was a more discreet way to ask about you.” Matty wasn’t at all sure why he’d said that - especially quite so directly, and in admittance, he hadn’t thought it through even slightly until it was all too late, and George was staring at him: wide eyed and hesitant.

“Oh wow…” George trailed off, biting his lip for a moment, because in all honesty, he didn’t quite know how to feel about dickhead pretty boy Matty from that one Tuesday and that one Friday… well… hitting on him. “Well… I mean I’ve called you pretty at least seven times by now - I thought that would have cleared things up.”

“You could have called me pretty objectively.” Matty argued, absentmindedly pulling at blades of grass with his fingers. “Like, Gemma’s pretty - I know that, but I don’t want to fuck her.”

George nodded, struggling to come to terms with just what exactly was going on between them, and just exactly where it was going, and of course the insinuation that he wanted fuck Matty. Which he  _ totally _ didn’t. Totally. “So are you gay… or?” 

Matty shrugged, picking a daisy from amidst the mess of grass and green leafed weeds, before sitting back up again. “Sexuality is bullshit, really.” He twirled the daisy between two of his fingers. George couldn’t help but smile - the bullshit talk had been inevitable, and here they were at least. “I’m not going to conform to one specific label that society’s picked out for me, I’m not something to put into a box, not something to stick by a solid set of rules. I’m free of all that bullshit, I’m attracted to whoever I am attracted to, and that’s just how it works. The imposed ideas of sexuality and gender and conforming to them are just bullshit. Love and self expression exists freely outside of those boxes. I don’t understand how I could be myself and live the way I would be happiest with forcing labels and expectations onto myself - it just doesn’t fucking make sense.”

George nodded, sitting up properly to face Matty. “You’re pretty much right on that one, I’d say. I mean, it’s a spectrum, more than anything else, isn’t it? No boxes or whatever. I’d say I’m somewhere in the middle on that spectrum kind of thing.”

Matty looked up, meeting George’s gaze, with a less than pleasant look in his eyes.. “Fuck the spectrum. Fuck anything. Fuck putting myself down as anything, honestly.” He let out a sigh, reaching up and putting the daisy held between his fingers into his hair. Of course however, it happened to fall out the very moment Matty moved his head. “Fuck.” He cursed, picking it up again.

“So…” George trailed off, watching Matty attempt to fix the daisy back into his hair. “Are all your friends gay?” 

He let out a laugh as the daisy fell from Matty’s hair for the second time. “Do you want me to help you?” He picked the flower up from where it had fallen between them, and with a quick nod of Matty’s head, and George’s inability to properly think about anything before he did it, he reached forward, one hand steadying Matty’s head, placed on the back of his neck, and the other, tying the daisy carefully between two curls to the right of Matty’s head.

Matty let out an awkward kind of choked off sigh, attempting to answer George’s question, but finding himself very suddenly aware of just how big George’s hand was on the back of his head, and just like that, that  _ something _ he found himself desperate to suppress had taken over entirely. “A few of my friends are gay. Not so many really. Gemma’s straight, though.”

George pulled away, admiring his expert work in fitting the flower into Matty’s hair, but generally, just admiring Matty, really. “So why wouldn’t you fuck Gemma?” George asked, for the sake of curiosity more than anything else.

“I’ve known her since we were fifteen.” Matty shrugged, not at all that sure himself. “I mean, she’s just Gemma. I mean, things get complicated after you’ve had sex, and I’ve… I’ve really got nowhere else to go that isn’t… yeah… Gemma’s.” Matty bit his lip, coming to very suddenly realise that had very little idea as to just where he was going to go tonight, because regardless of whether Gemma would have him back or not, Matty didn’t want to see her, not right now.

George seemed to catch Matty’s train of thought. “So tonight you’ve got nowhere to stay?” There was this voice at the back of his mind yelling to ask about Matty’s home, about Matty’s family, about stuff like that, but he managed to convince himself that it was easily the worst thing he could bring up at that moment.

Matty shrugged, “I’ll be alright. Figure something out.”

It was just then, that another one of those infamous worst ideas came to George. It lingered at the front of his mind for a while, growing rapidly, and in all honesty, he couldn’t help but be intrigued by it, because although it seemed innately bad, it was perhaps just the right thing to do.

“You can stay at mine if you want.” George offered, looking up at him with wide eyes. The notion seemed to catch Matty entirely by surprise, as he looked up at George for a good while, almost in disbelief of quite what he’d said. “Adam won’t mind.” He added, wrapping his words up with a small, tentative kind of smile. 

And again, somehow, in spite of everything else, Matty smiled back.

-

In the end, Matty spent more than one night at George’s. Perhaps he simply had a slightly more comfortable sofa, perhaps it was that his flatmate, Adam, really didn’t mind, although had been a little questioning of just who the fuck Matty was and what he was doing there at first, but that was understandable. But perhaps, it wasn’t to do with that at all. Perhaps it was to do with the fact that it Wednesday evening and Matty was yet to come to terms with what happened between him and Gemma, and really what it might mean.

Four days had passed since that Saturday morning and Matty was still yet to respond to any of her messages. They’d slowly grown less and less frequent - Gemma was well aware of the fact that Matty could take care of himself, and also that in the end, he’d always come back to hers. He was a bit like the world’s biggest dickhead of a cat really. He was clueless as to why Gemma might actually prefer him over a cat, but then again, she was a dog person, like Matty. 

Of course, also in those four days, Matty was still yet to actually mention to George what it actually had been that had caused that argument, and with the passing of each day, Matty could see George getting more and more concerned for him, and of course, with the passing of each day, Matty conjured a thousand reasons why he shouldn’t stay with him any longer, but with the passing of each day, Matty conjured a million reasons why he should.

Matty had slept through half of the day, and spent the other half doing very little at all. He felt a little awkward in George’s flat: a little out of place, and in general, so very nervous at the prospect of the inevitable moment when George gave up and kicked him out, and he’d have to figure out what to do with himself from then on, because by his own admittance, Matty had gotten rather attached to it all. Rather attached to George, in an odd kind of way, or perhaps just the familiarity of his presence, perhaps just the smell of the place, perhaps just the the view out of living room window, perhaps just the pattern on the shower curtain, perhaps just the little homely kind of bullshit like that. Or perhaps not.

It didn’t feel as comforting as Gemma’s place, and as much he did kind of miss it, he still couldn’t bare to face her, to face up to himself, and to the four days he’d wasted. Really, though, it wasn’t about Gemma, not at all. It was about how he didn’t want to admit it, but she was right. And she’d always been. And how Matty just didn’t know how to deal with that.

Eventually, George came home from the shop come quarter past four, and Matty so much as barely looked up from his phone as George kicked his shoes off by the door, and went straight over to the sofa, sitting down perhaps unnecessarily close to Matty. Funny thing was that neither of the two really minded.

“Adam’s out tonight.” George told him, watching as he continued to scroll through Twitter with a faked kind of interest.. “Texted me on the way home.” George came to recount to himself what was easily the dullest day he’d spent at the shop, and in all honesty, he might as well have not been there, having served only one customer throughout the six hours he’d spent watching the place.

“Is he trying to get away from the curly haired piece of shit his dickhead of a flatmate invited over to stay for one night? That guy who still hasn’t fucked off?” Matty raised an eyebrow, putting his phone down on the coffee table, and turning to face George properly.

George had to laugh at ‘curly haired piece of shit’, because in all honesty, he wasn’t that far off at all. “He likes you. It’s fine.” George assured him with a smile.

“I can never be sure with straight guys, because I mean, I’m pretty - that’s the only thing I have going for me, and I’ve not even been looking that _ good _ lately.” Matty was always sure to be exceptionally modest about his appearance, but of course, really for George at least, there was no arguing with him.

“Stop trying to seduce my flatmate.” George shook his head in disbelief. “I’m not letting you do that.” George was maybe a little bit jealous at the notion of it, but of course, he wasn’t going to admit that - it’d be almost as uncomfortable as the moment Adam had taken him aside, looked him dead in the eyes and asked him if he and Matty were fucking.

“I’m not.” Matty promised him, leaning closer to George, coming perhaps dangerously close to resting his head against his chest. “If I was going to seduce anyone to have a better chance of spending more time here, it’d be you.” George’s breath caught in his throat. “You’re into dick, after all. Just would make sense, wouldn’t it?” Matty shook his head, “don’t look at me like that. Don’t tell me I’m not allowed to seduce you either. That’d be no fun.”

George smiled, turning to Matty, heart fluttering in his chest. “Honestly, if you  _ tried _ to seduce me, it wouldn’t make all that much difference.”

Matty’s head cocked up at that. “And what’s  _ that _ supposed to mean?”

George shook his head, smiling. “I don’t know, Matty, what do you think?”

And there it was - that odd, overwhelming urge of  _ something _ in Matty’s chest, and the unavoidable truth that he just really didn’t dislike George, not at all, not anymore. The horrible thing about this all was that Matty just didn’t know what to do with it at all, and in turn, what to do with himself. What to do with George, what to do with the two of them.

“Can we order pizza?” Matty chose to break the silence that followed with anything but something that might actually answer George’s question, because there was just nothing like avoiding the overwhelming, looming inevitability of what would have to tear either himself, or the two of them apart.

-

Come ten that night, as darkness had settled in, Matty and George still found themselves sat in much the same position on the sofa - just far too close to one another for anyone’s good, but of course, just far too comfortable with that too.

They’d ordered pizza, as Matty had suggested, and ended up watching a shitty film on Netflix - something that had come up in their recommended, that neither of them had watched before, or even heard of, or in the end, much enjoyed, and had spent the two hours mostly taking the piss out of it as opposed to anything else. It had been nice pizza though.

It was as the film finished, and with the sudden realisation of how close that they’d moved to one another in the space of the past two hours, that Matty finally came to break. It had been a long time coming: looming over his head for the past few days, and perhaps in his current state, perhaps with everything as it was, he felt himself blanketed up inside this falsified sense of security, as George was suddenly more than just some asshole, but someone that meant something, despite what Matty might have argued to himself.

“It’s my fault really.” He broke the silence rather suddenly, catching George’s attention with a slight gasp of breath in the dim light of the room.

“What?” George came to ask, unable to piece together quite what Matty was referring to. “What’s your fault?”

“What happened with Gemma.” Matty bit his lip, holding out back at the tip of his tongue, something in him having flicked the other way, because all of a sudden, it was like the only thing he needed to do with his life was tell George. “It’s Mother’s Day on Sunday.” Matty let out a sigh, and George took a moment to thank everything that this had been the one year he’d managed not to forget, but more importantly, he struggled to piece together just how this could relate to Matty.

“I don’t…” George trailed off, unsure if he was just missing something somehow. “I don’t get it.”

“So I don’t have a home. Well, I guess  _ technically _ I do, but I got kicked out when I was seventeen. I haven’t spoken to my family since. It’s kind of complicated, I guess.” Matty let out a sigh, absentmindedly twirling a strand of hair around his finger. “Gem told me to call my mum on Sunday, get her a card, whatever. I told her to fuck off. I guess maybe I should, but she can fuck off. She doesn’t get it. She doesn’t know what it’s been like for me.”

“What has it been like for you?” George found the question slipping his lips before he could quite stop himself.

Matty’s face soon fell into a scowl. “None of your fucking business. I shouldn’t have to do shit that people don’t deserve. I’m not doing shit. Gemma can’t keep going on around like she knows everything about me and what I should do with my life - it’s my life, it’s my family, and she needs to fuck off.”

George suddenly felt rather cautious in regards to how quickly Matty had raised his voice, but he liked to think that he’d gotten an idea of how to deal with him when he got too full of himself.

“No, Matty, I mean from what I can understand, she’s right, and you should call your mum if you haven’t spoken to her for… two years…” The notion made George feel a little uncomfortable inside, but there of course had to be a reason, there was always a reason with Matty, and it suddenly became so very apparent, from the look in Matty’s eyes, that George just wouldn’t ever get to hear it.

“You don’t know shit, George.” Matty got to his feet. “You don’t know fucking shit. You know what? Maybe I thought you were different, maybe I just thought you were pretty. Maybe it doesn’t fucking matter, because you know what, George? I think you should just shut the fuck up, because you’re so very pretty, but whenever you open your mouth, it just  _ ruins _ everything.”

Before George could quite respond, or even fully comprehend just what was happening, and what Matty was doing, he’d shoved his feet into his boots, grabbed his jacket and made it out the door. Regardless of the hour, regardless of the whole fucking world, and regardless of how everything had crumbled down into nothing in the space of no time at all.

~

Four days had come to pass, but only to pass at half the speed: the world turning slowly as George found himself spending days and days waiting around. He was on edge: far too invested in the boy he had proclaimed was nothing but trouble. The very same boy that just wasn’t worth his time. The very same boy that he might have once imagined trying to despise.

It was a mutual thing, or so George hoped at least - that they’d grown closer in the few days Matty had spent at George’s flat, in the late nights together and slow conversations about nothing much in particular, because the thing was that Matty could talk for hours and hours about whatever, on and on about every little thought he had in the world - necessary or otherwise, but when it came to himself, when it came to the things that mattered - the kind of questions that George wanted to ask, he had nothing to say at all.

He wasn’t sure how, and he wasn’t sure when, but he’d definitely come to care about Matty, from breakfasts together for the past few mornings, in the looks Adam had given the two of them when he’d walked into the room - the kind of looks as if they’d been fucking each other in plain view, against the coffee table or something. Nothing much had happened of significance, however: nothing that stood out, nothing that brought it all to a standstill and changed everything.

It was just the little things, slight glances and gradual change: a fondness shared between the two of them. Or at least, on George’s end, because it was just as he’d gotten rather comfortable with the idea of ‘knowing’ Matty that he’d got up and left - without an explanation, without word from him for days now.

George had at first thought that he’d simply gone home, well to Gemma’s, as after all, he didn’t  _ live _ with George, and in the plainest terms, the two didn’t really know each other to much of a degree. They knew each other, of who they were on the surface, but when it came to the people down behind all of that, to the reasoning behind everything, they were clueless, they were strangers - back in the shop again, and that Tuesday so very long ago now.

He hadn’t gone after him at first. In hindsight, however, he came to accept that maybe he should have, but in that moment, with very little to say for the whole situation, and with very little idea of quite how Matty might react to all of this, he remained at home. He spent the evening alone, thinking, which soon fell into the bad kind of thinking, because in short, George had come to value Matty much more than he had ever bargained for. In the end, he’d come to imagine that Matty had turned up back at Gemma’s house - deeming her to be the lesser of two evils or something like that, George had gone to bed, sleeping in until late that next morning.

The thing however, was that Matty had  _ not _ gone back to Gemma’s.

It was the next day when Gemma came into the shop: all smiles, and oblivious to the situation at hand, that everything began to go wrong. Gemma had at first suggested that Matty had simply gone and stayed with someone else, but due to George’s excessive anxiety surrounding the situation, they’d gone through the process of asking pretty much everyone she knew if they had any idea as to what had happened to Matty. Of course however, a few days later, there was still no sign of him.

It wasn’t the first time that Matty had taken off for a few days, and it likely wouldn’t be the last, but the thing this time was that it was quickly growing to be a little longer than just a few days. There was also the fact that as much as Gemma had settled into the comfort of not worrying about him, the fact that  _ no one _ seemed to have the slightest inkling as to where he could be, definitely began to pray on her mind as the days continued to tick past.

They’d looked around town: everywhere they could think of, and Gemma now found her head sort of awkwardly dancing around the idea of  _ doing _ something about this. Something a little more serious, something a little more proactive than sitting around and waiting for Matty to return. Or, sitting around and just hoping that he would.

Over the course of the past few days, George had come to spend a decent amount of time around Gemma. He’d wanted to avoid Adam’s questions as to just where Matty had gone, as his flatmate was yet to grasp the whole of the situation and the severity it held, in George’s mind, at least. There was also the fact that, as pathetic as it sounded, he couldn’t think straight: he couldn’t clear his head, he couldn’t hang out with other people, he couldn’t do other things. He’d end up sat there, head rested on his hands, conjuring up the worst possible scenarios that Matty could have ended up in within such a short space of time.

In this all, George had grown quite familiar with Gemma’s flat, with mugs of tea on their sofa, accompanied by slightly heavier subjects of conversation, and in turn, Gemma had grown more familiar with him. Gemma, as they all had, that very first Tuesday, had never thought that they’d come to think that much of one another, and found herself as incapable of explaining just what had drawn Matty to George for those past few days, as George was himself.

George was certain he could find a much better use for a Saturday morning, a much better way to occupy his mind, but Gemma was just about the only person that began to understand the situation - the thing was that just none of his friends knew Matty at all. And if they did, George very much doubted they’d like him all that much, and indeed, the more George did think about it, the less sure of just why  _ he _ liked Matty he became.

“I tried calling him again last night.” Gemma returned to the sofa, carrying in a packet of chocolate digestive biscuits: having seen the sullen look in George’s eyes from the moment he’d arrived.

“Oh.” George looked up, taking his jacket off, and sipping at his mug of tea. He found himself already well aware of what would have been Matty’s response, or indeed the lack of it.

“Left a voicemail. Another one.” Gemma brushed her hair back behind her ears. “Must end up sounding a bit desperate this time around, but really… I was thinking.” She leaned forward, opening the packet of digestives and grabbing one.

“Yeah?” George nodded for her to continue, watching her with his breath held tense and high in his throat. 

“There’s something different this time.” She concluded, turning fully to face George, and holding his attention in a manner that might allude to the importance of what was to follow; George couldn’t help the anxiety that filled him in anticipation of it. “Because he’s… Matty… he always does read the texts I send him. He leaves them on seen, you know, just to rub it in a little bit - I don’t know. It’s a Matty thing to do - he doesn’t dislike you, but he just wants you to know that he’s upset.”

“But?” George raised his eyebrows, waiting for her to continue, because of course there was something more to this. 

“He’s not read a single one. I mean, he could have turned his phone off, but that’s just not a Matty thing to do.” She gave into a sigh. “I think he’s gotten into a state. I don’t know if you know what I mean, but sometimes, he just… I don’t know. Maybe it’s not my place to tell you so much about him, but- no, you matter to him - that’s obvious.”

George met her with a look of disbelief. “Is it?” He found that really couldn’t quite buy it.

“He doesn’t just do things for the sheer fucking hell of it. At least not when they matter, and I think it matters that he called you that first day he left mine. I mean, out of all the people you know, would you really call some guy you’d met twice before? I mean, no offence, but… you know what I mean?” Gemma paused for a moment, taking a sip of her tea.

“Yeah.” George added, taking a biscuit from the packet on the table. “I guess. I don’t know why though. It doesn’t make much sense - I’m pretty sure he hated me.”

“I was pretty sure you hated him.” Gemma met him with a look: all wide eyes, seeming to stare right into George, through his skull, and into his brain. “I mean, it doesn’t make much sense to me. Why are you here? Why do you care so much about him?”

George let out a sigh, stretching his legs out across the sofa as he thought for a moment; the answer was anything but immediately obvious to him. “I don’t know. I just, I don’t know. I guess it was that Friday when I drove him back here, I don’t know, I mean he’s still a dick, but I saw that different side to him. I guess at first I just felt sorry for him, and I spent quite a bit of time thinking about him, trying to understand just what his deal is, and then I don’t know. I let him stay with me. I don’t know why I did that, but I don’t regret it? I never did.”

Gemma sighed, face giving into a smile. “I’ve got it.” She glanced across at George. “I wouldn’t much have expected this, but…” She trailed off, shaking her head a little, “you fancy him. You thought he was pretty, even then, but now, you actually fancy him.”

George groaned, turning away: hesitant to tell her otherwise, because in truth, she wasn’t wrong - it was just George himself that was unsure about facing the truth to it. “I guess.” He gave into a response, and the knowing look in her eyes, and the fact that Gemma was lovely - not like Matty was, but properly lovely: nice, kind, friendly.

She nodded, leaning forward and taking another biscuit from the packet. “He likes you too.” George seemed to freeze on the spot, his heart skipping a beat inside his chest. “That’s obvious.”

-

Come eleven on Sunday night, George came to realise that he’d spent the weekend lost up in thought, in worry, in the mess that had come of all of this. Come eleven that Sunday night, George came to wonder just what would be on his mind if he’d never taken Matty home that Friday. If he’d never let this all happen, because in his own admittance, it was down to him - through and through.

Adam had gone to bed early, still hungover and feeling like shit from the night before, from a party that George had chosen not to go to. Adam had come to draw his own conclusions about what was happening with Matty, and George hadn’t bothered to do much to inform him otherwise. 

It wasn’t that they were in much of a habit of keeping things from one another, and in fact, it was quite the opposite - they’d been best friends for years, and trusted one another thoroughly - there was just something different about this all. George reckoned that if he couldn’t properly explain it to himself, he couldn’t possibly explain it to anyone else. Gemma had been a different matter, as she knew Matty much more than George did. 

In the end, Adam had come to conclude that George and Matty had been fucking after all, and this was their break up, and that this was mopey breakup George, and not concerned and anxious George, who sat up late at night, unable to quite put his mind to rest.

He sat in the living room, having turned the TV off long ago, letting the darkness set in around the room, and the minutes tick by on the clock, finding himself in two minds about opening up the shop tomorrow morning. Really, he had to, because it was his job, and there was no way around that, but he couldn’t bring himself to just do  _ something else, _ just live his life when god knows what had happened to Matty.

Matty, who was likely out there in a state, maybe having turned to cocaine, maybe washed up, sleepless, sat on some curb somewhere, locking those tired eyes with someone else that walked past - perhaps someone like George, perhaps someone that was nothing like him at all. Perhaps it had all gone wrong from there, perhaps everything had gone so very wrong. And perhaps they’d never see each other again.

There was something in George that was very stubborn about the fact that it wasn’t going to end like that, as in truth, it had hardly begun. And that wasn’t fair - it just wasn’t fair at all. Truthfully though, a stubborn head couldn’t bring Matty back, but perhaps hope could.

It was nearing one that morning as George’s eyes grew weary and tired: lids heavy, and body curled up in the sofa - too tired to drag himself to his feet and to bed, as it suddenly came to mean just so very little at all. He was perhaps minutes away from sleep, minutes away from letting the world fade out around him, when there came a slight disturbance in the silence and calm of the room.

At first, George wasn’t sure that he hadn’t imagined it, but then it came again, just as quiet: a tapping against wood. He pulled his head up, glancing around the room for the source - perhaps something had fallen off something somewhere, but then it came again: louder, forceful - a knocking.

With his mind slow and lethargic, George found himself hesitant in piecing together just what was going on, and with that it took him, perhaps too long to come to recognise that the sound had come from the front door. He wasn’t at all sure as to who could possibly be knocking on his door at one in the morning, and George had watched enough horror movies to know that this was exactly where everything went wrong, but those just weren’t thoughts that went through his mind in the state that it was in.

In fact, he was at his feet and to the door with very little thought on his part, only truly coming to his senses, and very suddenly so, as the door opened to reveal a far too familiar figure: stood before him in the darkness of the hallway. George blinked hard, at first doubting what his mind was showing him, but as he reached for the light switch to his left and illuminated the room, light flooded out into the corridor, casting shadows across a face that was so undeniably Matty’s.

Suddenly, George found that he didn’t at all know what to say, and for a good minute, they were back in that carpark: tired eyes and questioning looks, because with everything resting down on that moment, with every thought he’d put into it, with every moment he’d spent imagining what he hoped to be the inevitability of Matty’s return, he suddenly found that he didn’t at all know what to do.

He was  _ alive. _ He was here, and there was that odd distant look in his eyes that seemed to scream that he just didn’t know what to do with himself, and as unhelpful as it was, George just couldn’t help but share it. He was  _ alive. _ He was  _ back _ . He was  _ okay _ .

It was then that Matty began to cry, seemingly out of nowhere, with seemingly nothing to trigger it. It wasn’t just a tear or two dwelling at the bottom of his eyes, trickling down reddened cheeks, but him breaking out into a full blown sobbing mess, before falling forward into George’s chest.

George held him there, racking his mind for something to say, something to fix this, but there was just still that part of him, that through this all wasn’t quite convinced that Matty was real, and that he really had come back. As the moments passed by with the loud ugly sobbing, the dampness of his tears against George’s shirt, and his hands latched onto him tightly, as if  _ Matty  _ was scared that  _ George _ might disappear.

“Hey…” George finally came to open his mouth, reaching one arm around Matty to close the door behind him, before bringing his arm to Matty’s shoulders: holding him close, tighter against his chest - something in him suddenly so very scared to let go, and with good reason. “It’s okay.” He leaned down: words little more than a muffled whisper to the curls atop Matty’s head, but as they left his lips, Matty’s sobs began to soften slightly.

They stood like that for perhaps five minutes straight, holding onto one another so very desperately: Matty’s sobs gradually growing quieter and quieter, as he only seemed to lean closer into George. Eventually, Matty came to pull his head away from George’s chest, taking in the bright light that had flooded the room: taking in the familiarity of it all, then taking in how that meant nothing in comparison to George. 

“I’m sorry.” Matty let out a sigh, pulling his gaze up to meet George’s; his eyes wide and hopeful, despite the apparent innate sadness about them.

George shook his head. “ _ I’m _ sorry.” He smiled, moving out of Matty’s grip, as he came to the sudden realisation of just how very close they were.

“It’s my fault. I’m a fucking idiot. You’re right you know, you always were-” Matty began, raising his voice, leaving George to listen to the way it cracked. George shushed him, reaching out and and placing his hand around Matty’s arm; it wasn’t George’s shushing, but the physical contact that had stopped him from continuing. 

“Don’t.” He told him, voice so gentle, so cautious: unable to avoid replaying that moment where he’d stepped over a line he’d never been too sure of and ended up sending everything crashing down, and how Matty had stormed out, not to be seen at all for the days that followed at all.

Matty shot him a questioning look, as if he wanted deep down to argue his case, to condemn himself as the villain in this all, to return to ugly sobs against George’s chest, to return to the two of them in disagreement, and drag this mess on through the early hours of the morning. The thing was however, that he didn’t; George’s grip remained firm on his arm, and something seeming close to sense had begun to seep through his veins.

“Not now,  _ please _ .” George pulled his gaze away from Matty to glance up at the clock. “It’s late. We can talk about it in the morning. We should get some sleep.”

Matty shook his head, a desperate kind of pleading look suddenly sparking in his eyes. “No, I… don’t leave me,  _ please _ \- I…” He let out a sigh, reaching out and gripping onto George’s shirt, pulling him towards himself. “Don’t go.”

George wasn’t at all sure what to make of the situation at all: what to make of the Matty that had become of this all, what to make of the desperation in his voice, what to make of the look in his eyes. All in all, he was unsure what to make of him - still pretty, however no longer  _ just _ pretty, instead an odd kind of beautiful, as he stood there at one in the morning: red cheeks and tearstained face. 

It was in that, which George fell to what he knew best: the worst kind of decisions, made in little more than a heartbeat. The ones which logic argued against - an act solely of heart over mind, and an act that lay without regard for consequence. The thing about stupid ideas and bad decisions, was that despite everything, despite everything you thought you knew about yourself, despite the person you made yourself out to be, they came to you anyway, and in a weird way, that could account for more than any carefully planned and thought out decision ever could.

“Then stay.” George’s tone was slow, breathy; his eyes to the floor. “Stay with me.” 

Mind run rampant with something he couldn’t quite comprehend, George took Matty’s hand in his, and glanced towards his bedroom door.

-

They slept in late, finding comfort in one another: in boundaries crossed, in Matty’s back pressed up against George’s stomach, in watching the sun rise in the skies, in watching the world pass them by for a while. There was something in that morning that made George never want to leave the bed - something shared between the two of them - a familiar kind of something that had set a fire deep within their chests. It was that very same something again, all over now, stronger now: seeming to melt the entire world away.

In the end, Matty had convinced George to make them breakfast in bed - it hadn’t taken much, and George had come to accept that there was something: something growing quickly out of their control, but something that they could by no means ignore or hide from. 

George returned from the kitchen ten minutes or so later, as it closed in on half ten, and George came to spare a thought for the shop, but the truth was that it amounted to nothing in comparison to this all, because Matty was back, he was alive, and he was in George’s bed. That last one had only come to really hit George as he stood in the kitchen, waiting for the kettle to boil, and once it had, he found himself so very unsure as to quite how he should react. In fact, the only coherent thought he had on the way back to bed was an acknowledgement of just how thankful he was that Adam had left for work earlier that morning, and wasn’t here to judge their current situation.

Matty watched George, curled up to the left side of the bed, as George placed the tray of breakfast half way down the bed, and got back in himself. First, he grabbed his mug of tea, and sat back against the headboard, watching Matty, following his eyes to the spot halfway across the room where Matty had thrown his jacket last night, well, much earlier that morning. 

“I should text Gemma.” He announced, turning back to George.

George nodded, having managed to somewhat forget about Gemma, in well, sleeping with Matty. It was  _ just _ sleeping though, but that was something they were okay with - it was how things had naturally progressed. George wondered if it had been a comfort thing more than anything else, but he couldn’t help but look at Matty like he was most beautiful thing in the world, and pray to some kind of god that it wasn’t like that.

“You should.” George assured him, an intense feeling of guilt washing over him at the thought of Gemma waking up earlier that morning and spending her time worrying that Matty was still out there, god knows where, involved in god knows what.

Matty fussed with his hair for a moment, finding that it just wasn’t in the state to co-operate with him, and resorting to tying it back into a bun, which he continued to adjust for far too long, before finally coming to respond. “Yeah. I should let her know I’m not dead.” He let out a sigh and got to his feet, making his way over to his jacket and pulling his phone out of one of the pockets.

“Because it was fine to let her and everyone else think you were dead before.” George looked up at him, a defeated kind of half regretful look held within his eyes. “Sorry.” He shook his head, burying his face into his mug of tea as Matty climbed back into bed - phone now in hand.

“No one actually thought I was dead though.” Matty shook it off, opening his messages app and scrolling briefly through the ones Gemma had sent him over the course of the past few days, before beginning to type out a response.

“It crossed my mind.” George came to admit: voice so very quiet and hesitant, almost afraid of the way Matty could react to that, because in all honesty, George just didn’t have the slightest of ideas as to how he wanted him to. “Once.” He added, Matty looking up to meet his gaze: eyes blown full and wide.

“You shouldn’t have properly worried about me.” Matty grimaced a little, shaking his head in distaste at the prospect. “I just. I’m not good at dealing with things.”

“Matty, that’s bullshit.” George told him, rather plainly, bluntly, and in a very Matty like fashion. “Of course I was worried about you. I haven’t fucking stopped thinking about you since you left.”

Matty didn’t know quite what to say to that besides the obvious: “Why?”

It was that which lead George to a dead end: the question he couldn’t answer, not even for himself. Well, in all honesty, he could, it was just one he was yet to fully come to terms with, and on that Monday morning, he let silence fall over the room, watching as Matty texted Gemma some vague attempt at an explanation, resting his arm on George’s thigh as he did so; it was something that clearly wasn’t necessary, but something that neither of the two minded at all.

-

Matty’s reappearance had fit snugly into Adam’s own interpretation of the situation, and again, George had found it not entirely necessary to correct him. Gemma had called Matty just after they’d finished breakfast the day before, and he’d spent a good forty minutes talking to her, almost as if she wasn’t fully convinced that Matty was fine at all, and as much as Matty had rolled his eyes through the phone call, George remained silent, almost stoic: understanding.

Matty had spent Monday afternoon with Gemma, and George hadn’t been fully expecting to see him return that evening, but when he did come through the door at around seven in the evening, the two had shared a look: a look of understanding, a look in understanding of the fact that things never could have been any different. This wasn’t how it ended, not like that, not nearly so soon.

George had taken another day away from the shop for Matty’s benefit. Matty had looked as if to tell him otherwise, but the two came to understand that the last thing they wanted to do was spend a day apart. 

Perhaps it was down to the distance, perhaps it was just apologies and overcompensating, comforting and tears, the words that meant too little and the silence that meant too much. Perhaps George had once been able to pin it down as just that, but that didn’t look too likely for all that much longer, because what it was down to was the racing of George’s heart, of it pounding in his chest whenever he caught Matty’s gaze, for the warm feeling that coursed through his veins when he was around him. For knowing deep down that Gemma had gotten it right, on his part, at least.

“You were right.” The two were sat in George’s bed, still half asleep, even late into the Tuesday morning, and early into the afternoon. George looked up, taken a little by surprise in Matty’s sudden decision to break the silence. It had never been an uncomfortable silence, just something that suddenly seemed to fit. “I left because you’re right and I don’t want to deal with that.”

“I probably should have found a better way to say it.” George suggested, putting his laptop down, disregarding it immediately for Matty. That was a lot how his whole world had come to work, and George had just come to accept that.

Matty shook his head. “There’s no better way to say the truth - you should just say it.” He let out a sigh, glancing across at the vase of flowers on the bedside table: yellow sunflowers, plastic, commercialised, perhaps overused, perhaps out of place in the room, but serving their purpose. They were beautiful, regardless.

George gave a shrug: unsure if he fully agreed with Matty. It was at this, that Matty came to continue, suddenly very passionate in condemning himself as the wrongdoer in all of this. “I have to speak the truth. So do you, really I’m the fucking hypocrite for not being able to accept it. We all have opinions, we all have to voice them. Voicing them is important, and I know I’m never particularly nice about it. You shouldn’t have to be too.”

“I wish I was though.” George shook his head, holding Matty’s gaze. “I really do wish I was.”

“Stop acting like this was your fault. I’m a dickhead - we’ve gathered that. You knew I was a dickhead from day one, and you should know by now that I’m a piece of shit and I’m to blame.” Matty explained, his tone less self-deprecating than it was speaking a matter of factly, and George came to admit that on most of it, he wasn’t wrong, but he was still hesitant to let him hang this burden all on himself.

However, before George could quite get a word in, Matty found it to be his responsibility to elaborate. “It was fucking stupid really. The whole thing. I missed you. I fucking missed you, I missed Gem, I missed everyone, but I fucking stayed there, hopping from party to party, to sofa to sofa, high or drunk half the time, and you know why?” He looked up at George, meeting him dead in the eyes. “Because I’m a stubborn piece of shit. That’s why.”

George let out a sigh, desperate to dispute Matty’s claims in regard to himself, but in that moment, there was a much more pressing question on his mind. “Why? Why did you come back? What changed?”

Matty let out a sigh, curling up with his back against the headboard. He shook his head slightly, letting the room fade out into silence, leaving George’s question unanswered. The notion of pressing harder, of searching for more lay on the tip of George’s tongue, but this time around, he found that he knew better; Matty was delicate, complicated, in ways that George couldn’t even begin to imagine, and when it came to getting something out of him, it was down to Matty’s own choice, and his own choice alone.

-

That question remained as such, unanswered, even as the silence waned away, and smiles began to light their faces, and Adam at one point on Wednesday evening had compared the two to Ross and John, deeming them disgusting couple number two. Honestly, George didn’t think he’d ever blushed that much, and really, he didn’t think they could have possibly blushed that much between them. 

There was no denying that there was just something about that comment that had set a different tone to the atmosphere later into the evening, as the two ended up sat very much in one another’s personal space: curled up on the sofa, paying very little attention to the TV on in the background.

That day George had needed to go back to the shop, and the day dragged on the slowest it ever had. He had, however, served more customers than usual, for what it was worth, and perhaps that might have made his dad’s friend’s world when he returned to the store, but George had to accept that it meant nothing to him. Before, he’d found complacency in the shop, in working and idly minding his life away, but complacency just grew more and more devoid of meaning as time dragged on. 

There was nothing in scrolling through his laptop, listening to the same music, in small talk and smiles, nothing in the fact that Laura, sort of vaguely maybe pretty Laura, had texted him back. Nothing meant anything at all when there was, not even just pretty, but properly beautiful, Matty at home, with that odd kind of look in his eyes: speaking of something lesser than his usual self, and with so little George could do to aid that from where he sat in that shop across town.

The two had spoke of their days, of this old woman at the shop who’d spent a good forty minutes looking at the same book, to the extent that George had thought to stop her with a reminder that this wasn’t actually a library, but had found himself unable to care quite enough to do so. They spoke of how Matty had ended up going over to Gemma’s again, spending time getting vaguely drunk with her and their friends Amber and Marika, who fit into the category of being more of Gemma’s friends than Matty’s, and also the category of being incredibly gay. The two came to agree that they’d go down as Adam’s third most disgusting couple if he ever met them.

As the evening dragged on, however, the conversation had died down, and in a moment of silence, George’s phone vibrated on the table, screen illuminating momentarily to display a new text message - Ross, evidently pissed off that George had neglected to tell him about his ‘new boyfriend’. George wasn’t so much so affected by the fact that Adam had mentioned his understanding of the whole Matty situation to Ross, but by the way the screen had been angled so that Matty had definitely read the text too.

The two had only grown more comfortable with one another as time passed on. It was however, a mutual, unspoken kind of thing, and George did wonder if that was the best way to let it be, but he couldn’t face up to the horrible twisting feeling in the pit of his stomach that spoke of might what become of them if he stood the risk of everything all going wrong.

Instead, he found himself growing comfortable with the feeling of Matty pressed too close to him at seemingly every opportunity; with the way he didn’t seem so inclined to personally attack him over things such as his choice of mug anymore, and with the way that they’d spent every night together, sleeping closer than necessary, and the way that, of course, Adam had noticed.

Perhaps Adam’s solid belief in a relationship between the two of them lay in each time he made a reference to it, made a joke, gave them a look as he walked into the living room to see Matty stretched across the sofa with his head in George’s lap, anything of the sort. Not so much of the acts themselves, although, admittedly, George could see where Adam was coming from, but of the way, that through this all, neither George nor Matty ever made a bid to deny it.

In a way it had really been that which had plagued George’s mind; he had been unsure if Matty just felt awkward, perhaps uncomfortable with it all, but he knew Matty well enough to know that he was definitely the person to speak up when he wanted to. He did wonder if it lay down to something else entirely, down to the fact that maybe Gemma had been right on two accounts, but the notion sent a warm tingling kind of sensation throughout his whole body, and George wanted to do anything  _ but _ get his hopes up.

Truthfully, he fancied Matty. Quite a lot.

However, it was that very Wednesday evening that inevitability came to take its toll, as Matty came to stretch, coming awfully close to falling asleep in George’s arms, which admittedly, at that point, didn’t matter so much anymore at all, but still, he found the need to move away a little, the fact that something had come to bother him also, making itself blatant in the glassy look over his eyes.

“I never told you why.” His voice was louder than it had been before, working to immediately catch George’s attention. “Why I came back.” He elaborated, sensing a slight confusion in the look held in George’s eyes.

“You didn’t.” George gave a nod in agreement. He was, of course, desperately curious as to just what lay behind this all, but knew better than to push it. After all, Matty seemed as if he was coming to it this time, and George couldn’t deny that the prospect of that made him feel a little sick. It was just the way Matty had built it up with the silence, with the hesitance, with the look in his eyes, that George came to accept that there just had to be something meaningful to this.

“Gemma left me a voicemail. Sunday morning.” Matty began: voice shaking a little. “I wasn’t going to listen to it, but I accidentally pressed on the notification, and I’d gotten into a state where I thought I just might as well let it play.” Matty glanced up at George, a certain anxiety wrapped away far behind his words, perhaps invisible to the rest of the world, but George had quickly come to recognise it well. “She said something. She said something that changed my mind about things.”

George didn’t want to push him, but he found himself unable to stop himself from at least offering him a prompt to continue. “What was it?”

Matty spent a moment or two, sat there, just breathing, mind ticking back to that very moment. “I was at the park, bottle of vodka, wasting myself away, you know? A perfect way to spend a Saturday morning. And then, I just layed down, and  _ listened _ . Gemma’s… she’s lovely really, and she has this horrible knack for being right about things.” George shared a knowing glance with him, because there was certainly no avoiding that. “It’s bullshit when I tell her she doesn’t understand because she’s not me, because she does, maybe not entirely, but she does, of course she fucking does. I think maybe sometimes she knows me better than I know myself. Then was one of those times.”

Matty cleared his throat, wanting desperately to move back into George’s lap, to close his eyes, to let them fall asleep like that, to let things drift on, to let it all fade out into nothingness, and leave an unanswered question just as it was. Thing, however, was that Matty just couldn’t bring himself to do that

“She told me to come back, all the usual kind of stuff, but what it was that stood out was…” He trailed off, hating the direct nature of it all, and hating himself in that, because what did it matter if he could speak his mind and a whole world more but solely when it didn’t count for shit at all? “You.”

“Me?” George’s eyes widened, not entirely sure what Gemma’s voicemail had to do with him, and what that all had to do with this whole new kind of look in Matty’s eyes - one that George hadn’t seen before.

“She told me you’d only told me what you had about my mum because it was what you thought was right, and then that you’d only ever say that to me, because you…” He trailed off once, more biting hard on his bottom lip, turning the words over his head, perhaps for the millionth time. “Because you like me. Properly. You don’t just think I’m pretty, because a hundred people can think I’m pretty and it wouldn’t mean shit, but you  _ care _ . It’s different. You  _ like _ me.”

George sat there: heart at a standstill, hanging there in his chest, unable to breathe, unable to think, unable to move, unable to do anything beside sit there and silently regret his decision to ever properly trust Gemma with something that mattered quite as much as that did.

Matty finally pulled his gaze up to meet George’s. There was a look of uncertainty, of anxiety, of something else entirely, shared between the two of them: in that there was comfort. An odd kind, an unexpected kind, but the most important kind by far. 

“You like me, like I like you.” Matty let out a sigh, tucking his hair back behind his ears. “Funnily enough, I’m not that good with feelings. And I guess, pretty as I am, I’ve not really… that’s not really happened before. Not properly. I mean, I’ve fucked up, that’s usually it - I’ve been too much of a dickhead to them, and then they don’t want to know me anymore. Then there were a few… just didn’t give much a shit about me at all. I don’t know.” Matty let out a sigh. “I came back for you, because suddenly there was a moment where I managed to get my head out of my ass for long enough to realise that you mean the fucking world to me.”

Matty had anticipated an awkward silence, minutes spent in thought, in processing what he had just said, but there was, in fact, nothing of the sort. In reality, George managed to hold his gaze for no longer than all of five seconds, letting what he’d said properly sink in, before he just grabbed him and kissed him.

Kissed him like it meant the fucking world, because really, it did.

-

Thursday morning they came to wake in bed, much less innocently than they had for the past few nights, and indeed, also wearing much fewer clothes. In fact, it was hardly morning, well it was really, but not what George would properly come to embrace as morning, but instead a warm five thirty, with a beautiful sunrise; the sky the same shade of pink as the blush upon Matty’s cheek - just the very moment that George told him he was beautiful, because really, he was.

George found himself not entirely convinced of the fact that what had occurred between the two of them was entirely real, but the look Matty gave him served as confirmation. Also the fact that they were completely naked and covered in hickeys would be particularly hard to explain otherwise - there was that, too.

“You know?” Matty began, head falling back against George’s thigh.

“Mmm?” George prompted him to continue, running his fingertips gently through Matty’s hair, playing with it gently: twisting strands around and between his fingers like it was the most extraordinary thing in the world.

“That first time we met…” Matty began, leaving George to cringe at the memory, and take a moment to consider if the version of himself from all those many weeks ago could have possibly predicted that this might have come of it all. “In a weird way, I was jealous of you.”

George scoffed, eyes wide. “ _ Jealous?” _ He didn’t consider that to be at all likely, as in all honesty, he didn’t see much he had to be very jealous of.

“Yeah. You were happy, so content in just… living your life, being  _ George _ , being you. Comfortable with yourself, comfortable with your job, even though there was nothing much meaning to it, but just  _ content _ .” Matty gestured with his hands as he struggled to quite put what he meant into words. “And then there’s me, fucked up head, too much to say, no job, no home, no family, nothing to be happy about at all. I was jealous of that, because as much as I can’t help despise the idea of living such a simple life, just being so plainly happy with everything and finding no need to question everything, I guess I… I wished I could have that. Could be like that. Maybe then things would be easy.”

George shook his head. “I was never content. Just complacent.” He came to recall how different things had been, and part of him wished that he couldn’t pin the majority of the change down onto solely Matty himself, but the fact of the matter was that it was just how things were.

“Complacent?” Matty raised his eyebrows, not entirely convinced of what George was telling him, despite the fact that it was, genuinely, the truth.

“I don’t think I could go back to that now.” George let out a sigh, coming to imagine the world in a new light, but struggling to quite make it out beyond blurred shapes. “I think maybe, to a degree, you’re right about things. Life is a whole great deal of bullshit - it’s over and that’s it. I think I want to do something that matters. I don’t quite know what though.”

“Don’t look at me.” Matty insisted, letting out a sigh. “What matters to me isn’t going to necessarily matter to you - that’s not how it works. Like you care about your family, you care about all that, putting labels on how you feel - sexuality and that. That same shit doesn’t matter to me at all. Well, not in the same way.”

“Don’t like putting labels on how you feel?” George inquired, struggling to figure for himself just exactly what Matty meant. “Like, you’re not going to be like ‘today I’m feeling happy’?”

Matty shook his head, “No. Not like that. Not putting labels on how I feel about  _ things _ . I don’t know. I don’t like labelling my sexuality, I don’t like labels like ‘boyfriend’ or ‘girlfriend’-”

George cut him off, something catching inside his chest. “What’s wrong with being someone’s boyfriend?”

Matty sighed, sitting up and shaking his head. “That’s not what I mean. If… I don’t know, things got to a point and you wanted to call me your boyfriend, then I wouldn’t mind that. I just wouldn’t necessary want to say ‘I have a boyfriend’ myself, because it’s just… it’s a load of bullshit really, boiling someone down to this one label. I’m not here for giving into the society bullshit of ‘having a boyfriend, having a girlfriend’ whatever… like for a start, gender doesn’t just conform into two separate boxes - doesn’t work like that. And this is all checking a box off on some dickhead’s falsified list of what should make me happy. It all amounts to nothing.” 

“Nothing?” George flashed him a look, a little unconvinced by what he was saying, because there was this horrible voice deep inside him that so desperately wanted to be Matty’s boyfriend. 

“It amounts to nothing.” Matty continued, “I don’t need this fucking label to say someone ‘belongs’ to me - that’s just a load of socially constructed negative bullshit. I don’t need a ‘boyfriend’, I don’t need a ‘girlfriend’, I don’t need bullshit like that, I am this whole world, we are together this one being - we are all together everything that ever was. The world is not billions of single atoms, but everything those atoms came together to make. I already  _ have _ everything.”

“We’re not atoms though.” George began, voice slow and drawn out. “We’re people.”

“Exactly.” Matty, to George’s surprise, came to agree with him. “We’re  _ people _ . We are what those atoms came together to make. We’re all connected. People are more than social constructs, and money, and labels, for sexuality, for gender, for relationships. People are nature, people are instinct. We’re more than the rest of that  _ bullshit _ .” 

George shook his head. “If we’re all already so connected that there’s no need for anything else, then what makes what we have here different to anything else? What makes it that kind of special you told me it was?”

Matty swallowed hard - a voice at the back of his head insisting that George was right, but a voice, further forward, insisting that he had to stick to his own beliefs. “I don’t know. We just are. I’ve never felt it before, never anything like it. I’m sorry that I haven’t had time to fully adjust my entire worldview in the time being.”

George grew hesitant with the sudden sour twist Matty’s voice had taken, but found himself continuing to speak anyway. First, however, he reached for Matty’s hand, entwining their fingers, focusing on Matty’s body heat against his: focusing on the way his fingers seemed to fit perfectly between his own. Focusing on how that meant something - it had to.

“I think maybe, just maybe, you should consider being wrong about something.” George’s voice was calm: cautiously so. “The world wasn’t built in your image, after all.”

“How can you just change what you believe, though?” Matty began, leaning into George’s side. “You are what you  _ are _ . And that stays. That’s permanent.”

“Not at all.” George shook his head. “At least, not as I see it. Every idea, every concept, everything we are so sure of, it all fades away in the end, but something new takes it’s place. Everything you have right now is ephemeral, it exists, you may fall in love with it, it may grow to mean the world to you, but only ever for a while. I mean, nothing can ever be permanent in a temporary life.”

“So nothing ever lasts - it’s just a waste of your time?”

“I wouldn’t see it as a waste if it means something, if it makes you happy. That’s what matters in life, matters for me, after all.” George paused, coming to notice the distant looking growing in Matty’s eyes: taking a hold of his features and pulling him away from where the two sat, from the conversation they shared between them. “What do you think matters to you?”

Matty let out a sigh, pulling his gaze back to meet George’s. “I have no idea. Not anymore.” He felt George’s hand grasp tighter around his own, and in that he smiled - smiled for perhaps the one thing he could find a sense of certainty in. “You. You matter to me. I can say that for sure, about much else, though, I guess maybe I’m not so sure.”

~

Matty couldn’t deny that he’d felt his whole world turned right on its head in the space of the past few days. He didn’t want to put himself down as the kind of person that let people change him, but as the days came to pass, he found that perhaps more than anything else, he just didn’t want to be the person that never let anyone change his mind. Perhaps it was all a long time coming: the ability to see the world from someone else’s eyes, or perhaps it wasn’t necessary at all. Perhaps that wasn’t up for him to decide.

Perhaps he didn’t need to have  _ everything _ figured out, perhaps he wasn’t here to change the world, but just indeed himself. The latter even sounded so much more plausible as he came to ponder it. The fact of it all, however, was that it had turned everything over, it had brought about a horrible sickening feeling that was set deep in his stomach, because if he’d been wrong about one thing, then what was to say that he hadn’t been wrong all his life.

What was to say that his life was any more than a seriously planned and co-ordinated series of mistakes that he’d just decorated over, hidden away - like icing on a burnt cake - something like that. What was to say that he’d never been anything but wrong? What was to say that he hadn’t just been an idiot for years, yelling bullshit about  _ bullshit _ ? What was to say that he wasn’t exactly the kind of person he’d always so despised?

It cut into him, like a knife, twisting around inside him, between his organs and right into his ribcage. It was an unsettling, lingering feeling - uncomfortable, hanging over him, and so desperate to break him in two, but if Matty found that he came to stand for anything at all anymore, it was keeping himself afloat and putting himself back together again, even if it was with slightly different pieces.

Perhaps George had been right all along, perhaps George had known more than he ever could have, and despite everything else, George had stayed with him - George had taken him home, George had given him his number, George had sat with him that one day in the park, George had offered him a place at his flat. Most of all, George had only gone to tell him the truth for him to throw a fit and fuck off for a few days. Further so, after that, George had waited for him to return, George had worried, and George had let him back in. Not just to his flat, but to his life again.

It was George that had understood kindness and compassion, and with that, Matty did wonder if George would understand more about the world around them than Matty ever could.

The thought did unsettle him; it was down to uncertainty and the way it had been so swiftly brought upon him. Matty wasn’t sure as to just what it was in him, but there was something so very determined to figure it all out - what was behind this all, who put them here, if anything, if anyone. Just what it meant to live, just what it meant to be happy, and indeed, whether he’d been wrong in the series of rash, perhaps less than considerate decisions he’d come to make, because as much as he came across as the arrogant kind of confident, idiotic kind of brave, kind of beautiful, dickhead, in that all, he so desperately feared being wrong, and so desperately feared everything he’d done that had ended up hurting the people he cared about.

It was of course, the more that he thought about it, the more he came to accept that he’d done nothing more than fuck things up for himself.  _ He’d _ left home, he continued to ignore his family, to put them away, back out of his mind, and it most certainly wasn’t that he didn’t care about them, because dear god he did, it was just the way that things had turned out. In reality, he just couldn’t face the fact that in all honesty, he doubted his mother would much like her son anymore.

He’d left Gemma, he’d left George. He’d left the whole world behind - not running from them, but running from himself, running from the parts he’d kept up inside, and how desperate they seemed to tumble right out of him, how desperate they were to expose him for all he really was: for the pathetic excuse for someone who might have meant something, and Matty just couldn’t face that. Not the look on Gemma’s face, not the look on George’s, and especially not the look on his mother’s.

Perhaps it was easier this way, easier to let it all get worse, easier to lock it all up inside of him, where no one could find who he really was, where no one could quite figure him out. In all honesty, Matty did nothing but fear the opinions of others, the judgement of those around him, but still, he couldn’t quite bring himself to admit it. 

They could judge the side of him he might show off: the bullshit and arguments, the dickhead moves, the arrogance, the overcompensating - they could judge that side of him all they liked, because in judging that, they just weren’t judging him at all. And in truth, Matty found himself so desperate to hide this away, not just from the world, but from himself too.

Perhaps he could go on that way. Perhaps he could let the word pass him by: coming too close, right up against his skin, but never really getting under it. Perhaps he  _ could have done _ . Weeks ago, before this all, before things had changed, before they’d had that conversation that Thursday morning - him and George. Before they’d had another the day that followed, before the doubt had set in, before everything changed.

Perhaps he could have continued in the way he had always so blindly favoured, perhaps he could fulfill the shoes he’d set out for himself, but that was before George.

Matty had never wanted to be one of those people - soppy and pathetic, the kind who owed their whole lives, the air they breathe, their fucking everything to someone else. He’d thought it was all bullshit really - thought that there could never really be much more to it than just a person you can appreciate in regards to both personality and appearance. 

Yet, of course, he’d never found himself to be quite so wrong, because although he didn’t owe his entire being and life to George, he was certainly coming to get half way there: sitting on Gemma’s sofa once more, letting his eyes close momentarily as he came to listen to the sounds of her making tea from the kitchen. There were surely much better things to do with his Friday, especially in the scheme of things, but the fact of the matter was that just nothing had come to mind anymore, and that definitely had much more to do with George than he could ever care to admit.

Gemma had sensed the change in him the very moment he’d made it through the door: coming in with the intention of treating the place as if it was just as much of his home as it had been before: coming in as if he hadn’t spent every night since he’d come back at George’s; coming in as if he hadn’t spent those not just  _ at  _ George’s flat, but  _ with _ George himself. Funnily enough however, he hadn’t quite managed it - missing the table entirely as he’d so very casually attempted to throw his jacket down onto it, all partnered with a certain awkward look hidden at the back of his eyes.

Although Gemma hadn’t yet come to mention it to him, Matty was just as aware of her observation as she was herself, and he only began to wonder just what she’d draw from that as she made her way back in from the kitchen, carrying two mugs of tea. Gemma was good at tea, good at hospitality, good at making Matty feel like he meant something, like he was understood, like he wasn’t just little piece of dust - unwanted, floating about from place to place in the wind.

She joined him on the sofa, kicking his legs slightly to get him to make room for her, as Matty had found himself taking up the whole expanse of the sofa: stretched out, limbs sticking up in odd places. “Budge up.” She gave him a look, eventually resulting to pushing his legs back so they grew to a peak at his knees, his body curling up in on itself. “I know you aren’t asleep, Matty, you can go ahead and open your eyes.” 

Matty let out a disappointed kind of groan, stretching upwards as he obliged: letting the light through his eyes, and unable to stop himself grimacing as he did so - it was too bright, perhaps brighter than it had been before. He came to focus on his surroundings - how Gemma’s flat looked considerably cleaner once he wasn’t coming back to it every night, but how in the same way, it looked much less  _ lived in _ . He doubted that was so much so of a reflection on Gemma, but on himself, who’d definitely taken more of an advantage of her hospitality towards him than he perhaps should have. 

Matty came to gesture towards a vase that had once sat centerpiece on the coffee table; Gemma had now pushed it into the corner on an end table, and it lay there looking uncomfortably empty. “What happened to the flowers?” He glanced back to Gemma, watching her glance across at the vase with a certain confusion, almost as if she wasn’t quite able to immediately figure out what Matty was referring to. “They were pretty.”

“They’re flowers, Matty.” Gemma told him, stretching out in the sofa, the sleeves of her sweater falling down as she did so. “They die.”

Matty shrugged, tucking a strand of hair behind his ear, feeling through the curls and finding a certain absence of something in them, and with that he couldn’t help but recall that one Friday at the park when George had offered to help fix the daisies in his hair, and the way he’d held Matty’s head still with his hand on his neck. Followed by the way something had gone off inside him right then, in the way it was that very same something that had consumed him completely.

“Only if you don’t water them.” Matty prompted, not entirely sure why he was so fixated on the sunflowers that Gemma had once kept in a vase on her living room coffee table, but there was something within him that was just drawn to them. “I mean, yeah, they do  _ eventually _ , but you’d forgotten to water them.”

“I kind of had better things to think about when you’d disappeared for so long, don’t you think?” Gemma bit her lip, almost as if she was on the verge of saying something else, before seeming to give up on it entirely, and resorted to hiding her face behind her mug as she took a drink of her tea. 

“Maybe I shouldn’t have been such a stubborn dickhead about things if I didn’t want the flowers to die.” Matty let out a sigh, bringing one knee up to his chest as he stared down at his own mug of tea - still on the coffee table, untouched.

“Maybe.” Gemma offered him a smile, following his gaze down to the tea. “I’ve not poisoned it, you know?” She shook her head teasingly.

Matty offered her a smile in response. “Yeah, maybe.” He came to avoid her comment about the tea almost entirely, which was perhaps a little rude, but he just couldn’t deny the fact that he had other things on his mind. “I think I have to change. I think I already am changing. That scares me. A fucking hell of a lot.”

Gemma raised her eyebrows, the use of the word ‘scares’, immediately catching her attention, because all though Matty was somewhat renowned for his honesty, it definitely wasn’t that kind of honesty at all. “Why?” She prompted for him to elaborate as she placed the mug back down on the coffee table, desperately trying to read it all off his face before a word even escaped his mouth.

“Why does it scare me or why am I changing?” Matty came to ask, knowing that she wasn’t at all bothered as to which of the two it was, but found himself using it as an excuse to waste the time away: hold the moment in which she’d come to understand everything back just a little while longer, because as comfortable as Matty was with Gemma, he was still so desperately uncomfortable with himself.

“Both.” Gemma nodded at him, watching the way his face grew pale, seemingly at the prospect of explaining it all to her.

“It scares me because I’m getting this feeling that through everything, I was wrong, I was narrow-minded, I was arrogant, I was naive, I was stupid. I was exactly the kind of person I’d come to hate, because if I start to accept that maybe I’m wrong about something then what does that say for everything else?” He let out a sigh, letting his gaze flicker around the room, finding himself too tense to focus on one single thing for very long at all. “I’m… I guess… I guess it’s down to George.”

Gemma’s face gave way to a smile, having deemed the idea of George changing everything to be this pathetic kind of hopeless romantic ideal that just wouldn’t happen, but here it was before her, and in a weird way, she found that she’d never even considered that it’d be anything else to do it. But in all honesty, she had never even found herself entirely certain of the inevitability of change in Matty, or at least the inevitability of willing change - everyone had to change in the end, as situations did and life kicked them down to the curb, but this was just something different entirely.

“There’s nothing bad about being wrong, about making mistakes. What matters is that we change. That we grow, that we become better people.” Gemma concluded, so very desperate to ask in detail just what it was that George had said to change it all, but finding that maybe now wasn’t the time.

“I’m not entirely sure I know how to be a good person.” Matty came to admit, a sullen kind of distant look in his eyes.

“Not necessarily  _ good _ , but  _ better _ . You know how to be better.” She moved closer to him, reaching her fingers around his wrist. “Course you do.”

“Yeah.” Matty nodded, swallowing hard, because there were just two things that immediately came to mind, but the fact of it all was that just neither of them were particularly easy things to do. There was definitely an easier one of the two, though, and Matty came to lean towards that one first, putting the second off, but still keeping it there, at the forefront of his mind, always. “I’m scared, though. I’m scared of changing, I’m scared of leaving a part of myself behind.”

“Then take your time.” She offered, face folding over into a smile. “You shouldn’t have to push it. It’s going to have to happen in the end, so let it happen when it feels right. Let it happen when it should.”

-

Matty did end up taking his time indeed, letting in one week, closing in on a second, pass. It was in that time that Matty came to appreciate that perhaps what he’d gotten himself so concerned with didn’t mean so much at all, because upon every opportunity in which he attempted to explain it, and in particular the way it made him feel to Gemma, he found that he just couldn’t get it out right, because it just didn’t make so much sense to mean that much at all, but for his situation, for the way that things were, there was little avoiding the fact that it seemed to count for everything.

However, what Matty had managed to explain to Gemma was the whole George situation. At first she’d been surprised that they’d come down to what they had quite so quickly, but she had found that the more she thought about it, it just didn’t make much sense any other way. There was just something about what Matty and George shared between them that Gemma couldn’t quite understand - she, of course, wasn’t alone in that, as both Matty and George themselves were still struggling somewhat on that front. Matty, however reckoned that he was perhaps getting there, eventually.

They’d only gotten more and more comfortable with one another, and Matty found himself at times disgusted by his own thoughts, because although he didn’t quite  _ love _ George, not yet, not properly, he was definitely well on his way there. 

Things had only gone full circle with Adam, who had now just come to accept Matty sat in George’s lap as just as much of a given as walking into the living room and seeing the coffee table. It was quite odd, really, at least on George’s part, who had found himself coming to miss his accusations and largely unsolicited conclusions about the nature of their relationship - in a weird way really.

George had come to an odd kind of breaking point late Wednesday afternoon, when Adam returned from work to see the two of them pretty much making out, right in plain view, in the middle of the kitchen. Only, of course, seemingly desensitised to it all, to hardly even bat an eyelash as he squeezed past the two of them, who stood there stammering and blushing, as he made himself a cup of tea. 

It was as the silence dragged on between them that George eventually just met Adam’s gaze, and came to tell him rather bluntly, that yes, he and Matty were fucking. Adam hadn’t reacted quite as much as George had expected, which at first had been oddly disappointing; he’d given them little more than a smile and a nod, making his way back out of the kitchen, only to stop at the doorway, turning back, looking George right in the eyes, and letting out a sigh, followed by an extraordinary calm: ‘I know. I heard you,’ before walking straight out through the door.

It had perhaps been that, and the way that had at first seemed to hold the whole world inside it, but within very little time at all, faded out to the normal, faded out to jokes and smiles, that brought Matty to the easier of the two things he’d outlined for himself that Friday at Gemma’s. It of course, wasn’t until the second Monday that followed until he actually came to do it. 

He’d ran it all through his head a thousand times, and perhaps the more he thought about it, just the more he came to accept that maybe there really wasn’t all that much to it, but still, he couldn’t keep his natural anxiety at bay, and couldn’t stop the way his stomach turned over inside him - doing backflips as he sat in George’s bedroom, waiting for him to come home from the shop, having little more with his day then wash the dishes left in the sink, watch a bit of shitty daytime TV, and water the vase of flowers that had appeared on the kitchen table the other day, seemingly out of nowhere.

At six minutes past five, the front door slammed shut, and Matty found himself listening to the sound of George’s footsteps as they made it inside, through the flat, seemingly in search of Matty, and slowly growing louder until they reached his bedroom door. 

Matty only really came to explode with anxiety however, as George made his way inside, offering a quick smile to him as he sat with his knees up to his chest on the end of the bed. George then proceeded in taking his phone from his jeans pocket and plugging it in on his bedside table to charge. At that point, however, Matty came to accept that what lay on the tip of his tongue was perhaps better out there, eating away at the silence, at the looks shared between the two of them, than eating away at his insides.

“George.” Matty began, getting to his feet, and making his way over to George’s side.

“Mhmm?” It was as if George could sense a hint of something else in his eyes, and really, Matty didn’t doubt that he could, yet, he didn’t doubt that it scared him either. There was a certain degree of trust that Matty had come to place in George, and it was perhaps trust to a degree that Matty had previously found himself largely unable to imagine.

Matty wasn’t at all sure how to phrase it - wasn’t at all sure how to catch up with what it was exactly that was so rampantly running through his own head, and how to put it the best way possible, but perhaps the more he tried to do just that, the more he came to realise, and the more he came to accept that life just didn’t work out quite like that at all. 

Life was messy, life was broken in places, but life was true and honest, regardless of nerves, of anxiety, of the awkward little ‘what if’ thoughts holding you back. It was with that which Matty finally came to a conclusion, not just to whirlwind of thoughts locked up inside his own head, but to the silence too.

“Be my boyfriend?” He looked up at George, words coming out perhaps too nonchalantly, but he could certainly vouch for the fact that it just didn’t echo the way he felt inside.

George’s eyes grew wide, heart skipping a beat, and he found his fingers wrapping tightly around Matty’s, desperate to prove to himself that this was real despite what lingered at the back of his mind, desperate to argue otherwise. 

In all admittance, George wasn’t quite sure entirely what to make of the situation and where to begin to put together Matty’s thought process, and to figure out just where this had all come from. That was what delayed his response, not the actual response itself, as that was perhaps something that George had come to decide weeks ago.

Eventually, managing to get a grip on the situation, George let out a sigh, face falling into a smile, because fuck, he wasn’t sure what it was that had changed, but he found himself so incredibly thankful for it. He wasn’t entirely sure why, because it wasn’t so much the label of ‘boyfriend’ itself, but everything that came with that, everything hidden behind the look in Matty’s eyes - everything that he really meant.

“Course.” George watched as Matty’s eyes lit up, his cheeks growing pink, and the atmosphere of the whole room seemingly to relax considerably. “Fuck.” George let out a sigh, running his mind over possible topics of conversation, possible pathways on which they could depart from that moment on, but finding himself settling on nothing that meant quite as much to him as kissing Matty, right then and right there.

Kissing was easier than talking, and the both of them knew that there lay quite the something between them: untouched, but almost begging to break the silence of the room. That, however, could wait half an hour more. It wasn’t that they’d particularly  _ intended _ to end up kissing for thirty five minutes, it had just sort of happened. As most things involving Matty and George’s relationship had.

The two ended up stretched out across George’s bed, that had maybe, at some point become Matty’s too. They were curled up next to each other, with Matty’s head curled into George’s chest. George had been eager to break the silence that had fallen around them like a gentle blanket of snow, but had found that the minutes had dragged on, and the silence as had remained just as it was. 

In the end, it was Matty that did it. “My parents got divorced when I was sixteen.” He let out a sigh, letting his gaze drift across the room, his mind fixated upon that very moment, so vivid in his memory. “I guess things hadn’t exactly been  _ brilliant _ before, but things had gone wrong from there. I mean it affected everyone, but I guess I’m just worse at dealing with things.”

“That’s not your fault.” George added: voice slow, calming, and with a good intent. Matty didn’t see it quite that way, though.

“No offence, George, but… just…” He let out a sigh, “not now, okay? You can tell me how ‘beautiful and perfect’ I am in a bit. I need to say it right now, properly, don’t let me get scared and change my mind again.”

“Again?” George’s eyes widened, coming to wonder just what had been plaguing Matty’s mind, and of course, for how long.

Matty simply nodded. “Again.” He let out a sigh, taking a moment to remember just where he’d been a minute or so before. “I mean, I guess I had kind of shitty friends, I mean I was sixteen, we’ve all been there, but I don’t know. I started drinking quite a bit. I mean I had before, but… quite a lot. You know, drinking just to blur everything out and find yourself passed out somewhere that you couldn’t remember how you’d even got to in the first place. And then that just started more shit after my dad left, and my mum had to work more, and so she got me to help more, or she wanted to, or really I needed to, but I just couldn’t be fucked with it, because I was always in a state, always out, always drunk, always there to fucking waste my life, because I thought it all was bullshit, and it was easier to write everything off like that. To tell the whole world to fuck off than to really  _ deal _ with things. I just wasn’t there to help, to look after my brother and stuff. That caused fights, and I just didn’t want to spend time at home anymore.”

“Didn’t know you had a brother.” George glanced across at him, but then again, he came to recall that whenever George had talked about his family, Matty had just always listened.

“Yeah.” Matty gave way to a sigh. “I do. His name’s Louis. He’s twelve. I haven’t seen him since I left.” He shook his head, sitting up in bed. “I fucked up. I fucking fucked up big time, but I just I couldn’t accept that, I couldn’t deal with myself, and then I fucked off from school after my exams finished. I really started to do a whole fucking lot of nothing, and then I guess I got bored with that, so I started to do cocaine.” Matty let out an awkward choked off kind of laugh that was half way to a sob. “I told people that my mum kicked me out when she found out, but she didn’t. She was pissed, but she didn’t, but she wanted me to get better, she wanted to make it work, she wanted to help me, but I didn’t want that. I just wanted her to fuck off. I wanted everyone to fuck off. So in the end, it was me that fucked off.” He let out a sigh. “Funny that.”

George leaned forward, reaching for Matty’s hand, and giving it a reassuring kind of squeeze that had Matty glancing back to him, and offering up an awkward kind of pretty smile: half hearted, and falling apart in most places. 

“I ended up sleeping on someone’s sofa for a few weeks, then someone else’s, then winding up back with Gemma, who had ended up as perhaps the one person that didn’t entirely hate me, and I guess, back then, I was a junkie, a little bit.” He let out a sigh, shaking his head: unable to stop the thoughts screaming at him that he should stop talking, screaming at him in certainty that he was ruining everything. However, they just meant nothing, nothing at all when he felt George’s fingers, curling tightly together with his own. 

“Gemma’s too nice to me, I guess. I had this… this… there was this guy, though, back when I was seventeen. I liked him a whole lot more than he liked me, but that’s that. I stayed with him for a while, but he was a bit of a dickhead. Bit of a proper dickhead. It didn’t last. He helped me ease up on the coke, though… there was that.” 

Matty let out a sigh, moving back into George’s chest, pulling his hand away from his, but beginning instead to trace patterns into his palm with his fingertips. “Thank you for not being a dickhead. Not even a little bit.”

George let out a laugh - honoured but not entirely convinced. “I’m pretty sure I’m just a tiny little bit of a dickhead. I mean, aren’t we all?”

Matty shook his head: certain in his words, and unwilling to let George change his mind for him. “No. Not you. You’re different. You’re special.” George smiled, not entirely convinced of the truth behind Matty’s words, but figuring that perhaps it had been less so about factual honesty, and more so about kindness, about sentiment.

“I fucked up everything. With my family, with everyone that matters. I haven’t spoken to any of them since I left. It’s got to the point where they stopped trying, and it’s gotten to the point where I just don’t blame them at all.” Matty let out a sigh, voice growing quieter and quieter. “That’s why I have to change. Things have to change, I can’t keep losing people I love, people I care about. I can’t. Not anymore.” Matty’s voice grew quieter still. “I can’t lose you.”

George’s chest tightened suddenly, instinctively moving in close to Matty and pulling him further into his chest with his arm around his shoulders. “You’ve not fucked it up completely.” George assured him, letting Matty press his face into his side, hiding away from the world, hiding away, perhaps from himself. “Promise you. You can always change things. They don’t have to be the family you no longer talk to forever.”

Matty shook his head, desperately trying not to cry, as he’d come to conclude that perhaps he’d cried into George’s chest just far too many times already. “I don’t think they’d want to hear from me very much anymore.”

George paused for a moment: words resting on the tip of his tongue, held with a degree of uncertainty to them. “You know what I think?” Matty gave a nod, very much without thinking it through. “I think that’s just some bullshit you’ve told yourself - convinced yourself of to avoid facing up to them.”

Matty fell into silence after that, turning it over in his head, finding himself rather quickly coming to know George to be right, but finding that it took him so much longer to  _ accept _ that. He couldn’t help the way it tore away at his mind, digging itself deep up in there, and making itself much more at home than Matty would have ever liked it to be.

“You know?” George began, finding a certain something in Matty’s eyes, and coming to dig them both back out of the silence and perhaps even cover over the hole it had made.

“Yeah?” Matty looked up at him, a little on edge, as he was quite unable to push away everything that fell back to what George had said, because despite everything, George always just seemed to be right, and to know the best for him in absolutely the worst kind of way. Perhaps Matty didn’t quite  _ want _ someone to look out for him in that kind of way, but despite that, perhaps it was just exactly what he needed.

“What was it that made you change your mind?” Perhaps George’s question wasn’t the best thing to start everything over again, but after what Matty had said about his family, something had changed in him, and it brought George back to wondering just what it was that had changed his mind about it all. “The boyfriend thing.”

Matty smiled - it was a genuine smile, faltering slightly, but definitely having the right heart about it. “Because you are different, and I think you matter to me a hell of a lot more than being pretentious and free without labels, and all that  _ bullshit,  _ because those are just ideas, and you’re a person. Of course you matter more.”

“Ideas and philosophies count for a lot.” George reminded him, however finding himself unable to halt the fluttering of his heart in his chest. “You remember the invention much more than the inventor, don’t you, after all?”

Matty shook his head. “That doesn’t count for shit. I don’t want you to leave. I don’t want what we have to suddenly stop, and this gives things permanence, to a degree, I guess. This ties everything down. I guess I’d been so scared of that for such a long time, but it doesn’t scare me like it used to anymore. I think what scares me more is losing you again. I have to put myself back together. It was what you said that unravelled it all - my entire mentality, and everything I knew, but that was for the better, because now when I put myself back together I can use different pieces. I’m not scared of losing myself anymore - I  _ am _ myself, always will be. That self just has to change - that’s only natural.”

“I get where you’re coming from.” George admitted, taking a moment to delve down into his own head. “It’s not just you that’s changed, you know? You gave me a different perspective on things, you made me want to do more than sit around here my entire life.  _ Vaguely _ satisfied,  _ somewhat _ at peace. That counts for a hell of a lot, and I guess I’ve lost quite a part of me in all of this, but I guess it just has to be for the best.”

“I want to be more like you.” Matty let out a sigh, avoiding George’s gaze. “Don’t tell me I’m wrong for thinking that, because you’re the best thing in my life, I wish I could be that kind of person for somebody else.”

George let out a sigh. “You  _ are _ .” He thought back to that first Tuesday, to how this had all begun. “Weirdly enough, you are.”

“Shut up.” Matty rolled his eyes. “Why the fuck would you ever admire or ever want to be like me? Or even like me for that matter?”

George shrugged, finding that to some degree, he wasn’t fully sure of it himself. “How about, maybe I don’t want to be fully like you, and you don’t want to be completely like me? How about we just take a part of ourselves and meet each other in the middle? You shouldn’t let people change you - you should let people make you want to change yourself.”

“Honestly, you need to stop always knowing exactly what to say to me.” Matty’s face faded out into a grin. “Makes me think that you’re not real sometimes. Like,  _ logically _ , you know? You can’t exist? Because who the fuck can put up with me? But no, you’re here, with your stupidly cute messy hair, and your fucking beautiful smile, and your knowing exactly what to tell me, and your massive heart, and your massive fucking arms, like when do your arms even stop? And your massive dick-”

“ _ Matty _ .” George rolled his eyes. “Shut the fuck up, alright?”

“Honestly. You’re worth so much more than some shitty little shop, in a shitty little town, with your shitty little boyfriend.” Matty continued, finding that once he’d started it was actuallykind of hard to stop.

“You’re not shitty, but yeah, okay, you’re pretty little.” George broke into a fit of laughter as Matty’s eyes grew wide. “What? You said it yourself.”

“Ugh…” Matty let his head fall down into George’s lap. “But you are. You know that? You are.”

“I guess.” George shrugged, finding that he’d come to accept and welcome the idea of there being something more for him in life. “I don’t quite know what I’d do, though.”

“Male model?” Matty suggested, more serious than his tone let on.

“Fuck off. I was thinking something more like going to uni than standing around half naked in front of a camera.” 

Matty shook his head, doing his best to hide his slight disappointment. “You should, though. If you wanna go, then you should.”

“Not right now. I can’t exactly abandon the shop, you know? As shitty and little as it is.” George came to imagine just how things could possibly change in a matter of months, and how things really already had.

“Don’t be rude about it - great things do come in small packages.” The smirk on Matty’s face was clearly recognisable in his tone of voice.

“Matty, if that’s a reference to your dick, I swear to-”

“ _ George _ .” Matty shook his head in mock disbelief. “Don’t be so ri _ dick _ ulous.”

“Stop or I’ll kick you out.” George groaned, his tone evidently humorous, but there was something about it that seemed to stick with Matty for just a moment.

“Would you?” Matty glanced up at him, eyebrows slightly raised, not really convinced that George would, but unable to combat a slight doubt in his mind.

“Course not.” George brushed Matty’s hair from his face and pressed a kiss to his forehead. “You can stay here as long as you like. Adam can fuck off if he thinks otherwise, but honestly, I do think he really does quite like you.”

Matty smiled, not for a moment doubting that George’s offer did comfort him, and in admittance, he really didn’t want anything more, but there remained something always at the front of his mind, having grown and changed: spiralling slightly out of its confines as the two had spoken. It brought Matty this odd kind of tingling sensation that he felt throughout his entire body, but the thing was that he was coming to realise that it just wasn’t necessarily bad.

And the thing was, that with the first of two things out of the way. Matty needed to tackle the second. “No.” His voice was much calmer than he was on the inside. “I need to go home. To my family. I have to fix things before they get worse.”

~

Matty had to admit that it was anxiety that kept him awake - kept his mind whirring, turning itself inside out and on its head, as it struggled in systematically worrying about every single thing that it was physically possible to be concerned with.

George had been surprised when Matty had told him the night before, and in a weird way, although Matty had expected him to be, he wished that it wasn’t like that. He wished that he could begin pretending now - properly put everything together in his mind like his was living a proper life, like they were a proper family, like there was just one thing in his life that he hadn’t managed to fuck up.

But things just didn’t work that way. His mind kept him awake, thrown back elsewhere, thrown back to when he was sixteen, to the very moments in which everything had all gone wrong. In those very moments in which he’d let it, because as much as he’d tried to avoid that fact all along, this was just his fault, and it had always been so. It was in that, however, that he knew he had to fix it, because there was just nothing else he could do.

George had spent last night looking at him a little differently. Only when he reckoned Matty hadn’t noticed, or wasn’t looking at him, but Matty had picked up on it in the end. Matty couldn’t quite pinpoint what it was, but again, something had changed, and Matty just wasn’t sure if he wanted to figure out what that was immediately, as he would have before. It wasn’t that he wanted to prolong it, postpone it to the point of nonexistence, but just let it happen, let it naturally come to take its course, as it eventually would.

There was also the part of him that lay assured that it couldn’t be much of a bad thing anymore. This was the part of him that had come to trust George more than he’d ever imagined to be possible, and of course, this was likely the most fragile part of him, but perhaps at that moment in time, it was the part that spoke louder than the rest.

They’d gone to bed at around one in the morning - perhaps later than they should have done, but neither of the two had really minded: letting themselves make the mistake of a late night, and dealing with the regret of it in the morning. At least, George would do so, as he’d managed to get to sleep within fifteen minutes or so of lying there, but come half four in the morning, Matty still lay awake: now on his back, gaze fixated up at the ceiling, trying to focus on the slight crack in one corner of it in the low light of the room, and indeed anything but what was really at hand.

He spent a good ten minutes focusing on his own breathing - the steady rise and fall of his chest as he took breath in and then out. When that failed, he spent a good ten minutes focusing on George’s: holding his own breath for varying amounts of time in order to align their breathing patterns, because that was the kind of stupid shit that Matty did now apparently. He then turned over, watching the clock on the wall for a while, watching the minutes tick by, and wondering just what time would be appropriate to properly  _ wake up _ . 

It was apparent to him by now that he just wouldn’t be getting any sleep that night. Perhaps that wasn’t exactly for the best, perhaps there he was, making another terrible decision, but he found that there was just so very little he could do about it, and to some degree, maybe that was okay. To some degree, however, it wasn’t, but regardless of degrees and opinions, and all that kind of bullshit, he still lay awake, sleepless, his mind creeping back to his seventeen year old self and focusing in on every single mistake he’d made.

Ten to five in the morning was far too early to wake George up, because that had been his first call - the one thing on the back of his mind for the past few hours. As much as George was there physically, he did miss his company in the form of conversations and smiles, and the presence of something in the silence to pull his mind back away from his younger self and the hole he’d dug for himself in all of this.

He hadn’t been sure of it the night before, but it was by the time that four in the morning rolled around that he’d come to accept that this was the day. Despite the fact that the day had hardly begun, despite the fact he was far from the appropriate state of mind, this was when it had to happen. It was just that the more he thought about it, the more he couldn’t avoid it, and the more he couldn’t avoid it, the more he just couldn’t bear it.

He had to fix things. He had to fix things while he still could - before things got worse, and things would, even if not directly, but just as easily as today could turn into tomorrow, two years could turn into three, and with the sudden weight of understanding and responsibility that Matty had allowed to press down fully on his chest, he came to accept that it had to be today. He wasn’t sure if he could bare it otherwise.

He let eventuality dance around his head for a few minutes more, glancing towards the window and watching the sun begin to rise: watching the way the skies grew just that little bit less darker, and with that, the world was brought everything. The warm heat of the day, the glow that sunflowers would turn to catch, the warmth that people would reach out to feel upon their skin, was of course quite a way off, but it was coming - riding through the world as if it had been secured on the back of inevitability.

It was around five when he pulled himself together enough to get out of bed. The thoughts no longer coming like tiny daggers to his mind, but like a dull force, perhaps kinder, gentler than before, but much less intermittent - permanent in its place, and in an odd way, Matty found a comfort in that.

The fact of what he was going to do didn’t quite sink in until he’d gotten dressed, grabbed his phone, spent a good minute glancing back at George - he lay peaceful and yet to stir, sound asleep, and seemingly so content with the world. It was then still not until he made it through the flat, making an effort to tread lightly, despite the fact that he was confident in his assumption that both George and Adam were asleep. Of course, however, he’d been over-confident in that belief, and found himself rather lost for words as he caught Adam peering at him from the kitchen.

The two held each other’s gaze in the low light - both of them unable to quite figure out just exactly what it was that the other was doing awake at such a time. It was then that Adam came to notice how Matty was fully dressed and headed towards the front door. 

Adam shook his head, making his way towards the kitchen doorway. “You’re not leaving again.” He let out a sigh, struggling to come to terms with what might be happening before him in the three minutes he’d gotten out of bed to get a drink. “I won’t let you. He loves you.” 

Matty nodded, struggling to put it all into words, especially for Adam who knew nothing about Matty further than what he looked like, how much of a dickhead he could be, and the fact that he was fucking George. It wasn’t like the two had never shared a word since Matty had ‘moved in’, but they’d found themselves sharing a conversation alone on perhaps only one other occasion, and in that case, the subject was much more trivial. “I’m not leaving.”

Adam didn’t seem convinced, and just gestured at Matty’s clothes, and attempted just for a moment to think of any logical reason why he’d be dressed to go out at five in the morning. “What are you doing then?”

“I…” Matty trailed off. “I guess I am leaving. Not permanently. I… I’m not leaving  _ George _ . We’ve talked about this. I have to go see my family.” Matty bit his lip, praying that Adam wouldn’t push it any further, because as awkwardly put together as it was, it was still the genuine truth.

“At five in the morning?” Adam raised his eyebrows, glancing back into the kitchen and towards the clock on the wall.

“Yeah.” Matty told him, holding his gaze a little more sternly. “It’s kind of complicated, I guess. George knows why, he understands what’s going on, though. Don’t get your hopes up, you  _ are _ going to see me again.” 

It was then, before Adam could respond, that Matty made his way out of the door and into the street.

-

It was rapidly growing lighter, nearing conditions that he probably could see in, and in an odd way, he felt as if the morning was racing against him as he made it through the streets, turning towards the little twenty four hour Tesco on the end of one. 

He found himself being silently judged by a cashier as he made his way inside, because really, what was any ‘normal’ person doing awake at this hour, and really, what  _ was _ Matty doing with his life? Just trying and struggling to fix it, because things never quite worked out as they planned.

Within two minutes, he emerged from the shop with a bouquet of flowers - yellow and orange tulips - and a packet of cigarettes, because he figured that he needed a little extra help in all of this. It was then just a minute or so later, that he found himself sat on the bench outside, plastic bag on the floor between his legs, and eyes fixated up on the sky and the orange tones to the sunrise, as he fumbled with the packet of cigarettes, doing his best to get one alight between his shaking fingers.

He sat there smoking, watching the sky, watching the quiet and calm of the world go by, as he came to consider just quite what he’d  _ do _ when he got there, when he made the way across town, when he made his way back home. When he stood on the doorstep at not far past five in the morning, holding a cheap bouquet of tulips, hoping that all in all, he couldn’t make too much of a bad impression. Or at least one that was worse than what he’d already made.

In truth, he had very little idea at all, and found that he’d come to obsessively think over perhaps everything despite the most important detail of it all. There had to be some sort of an explanation to this all - it wasn’t like his mum would just welcome him inside like nothing had happened in the past few years, because as much as Matty would have liked that, it just wasn’t how the world worked. 

She’d want an explanation - both for why he’d come so early, and why he’d come at all, and really all Matty had to go on was the fact that he’d let someone into his life enough for them to actually be able to tell him just how the fuck to sort it all out, and how that had been helped by the fact that this person was just pretty enough that he was inclined to listen to him. 

Or perhaps she wouldn’t want to see him at all. Matty just wasn’t sure what he’d do then, because of course, he’d just have to go back to George’s, and maybe cry a bit, and then maybe get on with his life, because suddenly despite the years he’d spent locked up inside himself and so very desperate to ignore his family completely, he found that he just couldn’t face being turned away by them. Perhaps that was hypocritical of him, but perhaps there just wasn’t an awful lot he could do about that.

It was closing on half past five when he finally made it: down a road that felt the very kind of familiar that sent shivers down his spine. He’d made quite the point of avoiding this part of town for so very long now, and as he walked up the road, towards his house, situated right on the end, he could almost see himself: age seventeen, storming right back out and closing that front door for the last time. 

Matty was here to make sure that it wasn’t the last. He was here to make sure that he put himself together properly again, that maybe he’d live the kind of life that wasn’t just worth it for him to ensure that he could feel better than everyone else, but the kind of life that mattered deep down. The kind of life that really did mean something, because Matty was through with falsified meanings, and living your life in the image of who you felt you had to be and not who you really were. After all, how could he have thought that it was he alone who had the power to save the world, when he was still yet to save himself?

As he turned down into his driveway, he inhaled sharply, suddenly finding himself a little dizzy with it all, and came to reconsider, to view turning back now as the much more favourable option. Perhaps just a phone call would do it in the end, and as he began to convince himself of that, he looked down to the bouquet of flowers in his hand, and came to just  _ think _ for a minute. It was just the very something deep inside his mind that didn’t want to let the flowers die that made him question everything again, and there was an odd moment in which he came to consider that, and leave it as the only thing pushing him forward.

He stood on the doorstep for a few minutes more, glancing at the sun rising in the background, watching the day truly begin, and then turning back to the doorbell, to that little button beside the front door, that really wasn’t so much his anymore. He felt his heart doing backflips in his chest, and himself growing suddenly lightheaded as he reached out, hand shaking frantically as the tip of his index finger hovered above the doorbell. He let out a sigh, and with everything he had previously known breaking apart inside of him, he pressed it down.

That was when everything stopped. 

There came the first silence in his head for hours. The world stopped spinning, and everything seemed to focus back in on itself again, and suddenly Matty was so much younger, and so much less caught up in himself, but with so much less of an idea as to what kind of person he was going to end up being.

It was as Matty came to wonder if he should ring again, despite the time, despite the generally poorly planned nature of the situation, that the sound of footsteps reached him from inside, and with the sound of a key in a lock, the door opened before him.

And there she was. 

His mum.

With tired eyes and a dressing gown, and Matty suddenly couldn’t help but feel guilty about getting her out of bed. Guilty in a much different way, as it was the kind of guilty that he’d never really felt when he’d left in the first place. In a way, everything really had been turned on its head, but perhaps there was just nothing wrong with that, after all.

“ _ Matty _ ?” Her eyes widened as she took him in, just stood there, silent, eyes meeting hers. “I…” She blinked rapidly, almost as if she began to suspect that he might fade away into nothingness the very moment she looked away, that he could never possibly be back, but of course, he was.

“I brought you flowers.” Matty began, offering the bouquet ratherly awkwardly to her, finding them to be perhaps the first thing he could think of to talk about - the flowers being perhaps the one thing he could explain. “I’m sorry I missed Mother’s Day. I missed a few. Maybe I should have bought you more-”

She didn’t let him finish, pulling him into a hug: a proper mum hug that left Matty speechless, and a little bit squashed, but with this warm kind of feeling in his stomach that really did wonder if everything was going to be alright in the end.

They finally pulled away after what had been something close to two minutes, and Denise came to find tears dwelling in bottom of her eyes, it was of course, however, something that Matty couldn’t help but share, feeling his body going limp all over as he stood there in the first rays of morning light.

“Will you come inside?” Her voice cracked a little as she spoke, trying her best not to break out into a full blown fit of tears in front of her oldest son - the very one she hadn’t seen in two years, and had almost come to accept might not ever be coming back.

“Yeah.” Matty nodded, glancing behind her into the house - his house, after all. “Please.”

He found his body going slightly numb all over as he followed her back inside, placing the tulips down on the table by the door and taking his shoes off. Looking around was like a punch of nostalgia to the gut, and in all honesty, Matty just didn’t quite know how to deal with it at all, and honestly, he felt just that little bit sick, but if there ever was a good kind of sick, this certainly had to be it.

After a minute or so, he found his way through to the kitchen, catching his reflection in the hallway mirror as he walked past, and for just a moment, seeing his seventeen year old self, seeing the person that the house once knew, but soon enough that faded away, and he saw himself there, perhaps just as tired, perhaps just as torn up inside, perhaps always bound to ultimately be the same person, but finding that time had put them worlds away from one another. 

It was however, after that, that the floorboards seemed less inclined to creak under his feet, and the hallway just seemed a little bit less dark, and it all felt just a little bit more like home.

“We should have something to eat.” When he closed the kitchen door behind him, he found that she’d set two mugs of tea out on the table, and was in the process of filling the toaster. “It’s around six now, anyway. I guess you haven’t had breakfast yet?” She turned to him, awaiting a response.

There was just something so much easier in the meaningless, kind of idle, waste of time questions, than there was in actually facing what had become quite the elephant in the room. As much as Matty was happier to answer those kinds of easy questions, that just wasn’t what he’d come back for.

“No I haven’t.” He began, sitting down at the kitchen table, taking his jacket off and putting it over the back of the chair. “I’m trying to be a better person.” He continued, focusing his gaze in on the cup of tea sitting down just in reach of his arm. “Fix things properly. It’s kind of a long story, but I guess that’s what I’m here for. I want to be in your life again. I want to be a better son.”

Denise took a moment, finding herself just focusing in on breathing for a while, finding that she perhaps hadn’t been quite as prepared when it came down to what Matty had actually come back for. “It wasn’t your fault. Things weren’t easy for you. I didn’t think about how it had all made you feel nearly as much as I should have.” She began to butter a few slices of toast for them, spending perhaps much longer than necessary doing it, and taking far more care than she should have done in arranging them across two plates.

“That’s…” The word Matty had leapt to was ‘bullshit’, but he became so very suddenly aware that this was his mum, and the fact that he was nineteen just didn’t count for anything at all. “Rubbish.” He finished, watching as she placed the toast down on the table, and finally took the liberty of sitting down across from him and facing the situation at hand.

“Things were hard for all of us after your dad and I separated.” She continued, letting out a sigh as she couldn’t help but slip back to that time.

“I shouldn’t have left, though. I never should have left, and I most certainly never should have shut you out of my life for two years.” Matty looked up at her, really meeting his mother in the eye. “Stop phrasing things nicely, tell me how it is. I’m not going to leave again, that’s not going to happen this time. I’m not the same person I was when I was seventeen.”

Denise leaned forward, placing her elbows onto the table and her face into her hands. “Jesus, you’re an adult now, aren’t you now? You’re  _ nineteen _ .” She looked up at him. “You’re… you’re… nineteen. Jesus Christ, Matty, where have you been for two years?”

“With Gemma, mainly.” He let out a sigh, tracing patterns into the tabletop with his fingertips. “She let me stay with her. Do you remember Gemma? The nice one. Pretty, skinny, curly hair.”

“The nice one.” Denise repeated, letting out a sigh.

“Well, it’s not like all the rest of my friends weren’t dickheads.” Matty found himself speaking before he’d really thought about it. He pulled his gaze awkwardly up to his mum, who just smiled, shaking her head, because as much as he really was, Matty just didn’t feel nineteen at all: sat there, at the kitchen table, with his mum. In admittance, he hardly felt seventeen either. He felt much younger than that. Maybe thirteen, before everything had all turned on its head, but there was just no way of going back now.

“Yeah.” She nodded, taking a sip of her tea. “I know who you mean. Gemma’s nice. Very nice to let you stay with her for two years.”

Matty nodded, smiling. “She is. I’m not friends with any of the others anymore. I was at first, but then they got bored of me, I guess people always do. I guess I just wasn’t that interesting anymore after I stopped snorting coke everyday.” He let out a sigh, finding that it trailed off into an awkward kind of nervous laughter that really just wasn’t necessary at all. “I ended up in quite a bad mental state, and then I don’t know, I just built on top of that with arrogance and fake confidence and that kind of… shit. Gemma was just nice enough to put up with that, I guess.”

“And what changed that?” She asked, her voice shaking slightly, “because something has changed. I know that.”

“There’s this guy called George. I met him once in a shop, came across as a real twat - something I guess I’m just particularly good at, but then I saw him again when I was alone in the rain one evening, and he offered me a ride home despite the fact I’d basically verbally attacked him the other day. Ended up saying that he cared about me, and really… that surprised me a lot, because really, who does? He gave me his number, and in the end I ended up calling him, and then I… I don’t know. I stayed with him for a while. He’s really lovely, but he tells me when I’m being a dick. He tells me when I’m wrong, and that’s I guess why I didn’t like him at first. I couldn’t face being wrong, but I think everything’s different now. He made me think differently about things. He made me change my mind.”

Denise’s lips folded up into a smile. “You’re a whole new kind of stubborn, Matty. What kind of person could possibly make you see sense when you’re wrong? I have to meet him, you know?”

Matty blushed. “He’s very pretty. I guess that helps.”

“Oh, so he’s…?” 

“My boyfriend. Yeah.”

Matty smiled, leaning back in his chair, and watching through the kitchen window as the sky grew to a lighter shade of blue. He caught sight of the flowerbed in the garden, sunflowers already beginning to turn up towards the sun.

As Denise came to share that smile, he found that perhaps things had just always been easier than he’d thought. Perhaps he’d never needed to leave that one day two years ago, but even if he could, Matty didn’t think he’d do things differently at all, because here he was in the end of it all, finding himself with hopes of ending up happier than he could have ever been.

-

George had spent the whole evening blushing. Matty had spent the whole evening with his face lighted by a smile. George’s friends were lovely - a whole new kind of lovely - properly lovely. Even if though, Matty hadn’t been quite been able to make it inside Ross and John’s house without immediately thinking back to that one day George had told him about the individually and disgustingly labelled items of food in their fridge. There was a part of him that wanted to see it for himself, but overall, he knew that just some things could never been unseen, and maybe it was for the best.

It was a sort of vague gathering/party kind of thing, that really had only been orchestrated as an excuse for George’s friends to meet Matty, and really, despite coming to learn that so very quickly, Matty found that he didn’t quite mind at all.

The two ended up sat on the floor in Ross’ living room, some shitty kind of indie music on in the background, and Matty’s head in George’s lap as they talked shit and passed a spliff between them. George could feel Ross watching them from the other side of the room - not in a weird way, but in a protective friend kind of way, and as slightly uncomfortable as it did make George feel, his heart was certainly in the right place.

He’d seemed to have taken a really awkward half discreet approach in making sure that Matty wasn’t actually the worst person alive earlier, which involved asking Matty just what his opinions on Donald Trump were as he walked in through the door. Despite this all, however, Matty still insisted on telling George that his friends were lovely, and really, George had to admit, they were.

It was eventually Ellie that approached them first, sitting down opposite the two of them with a glass of wine held in her left hand. “Hey.” She smiled across at Matty, who made the effort to get his head out of George’s lap. “I’m Ellie. I’ve heard a lot about you, although, admittedly mainly from Ross in the kitchen. I think he’s concerned that there’s been another contender for most disgusting couple.”

George rolled his eyes, letting out a sigh. “We are nowhere  _ near _ as disgusting as they are. Go tell Ross he can go fuck himself- no, go remind Ross of the housewarming party he made everyone go to. Remind him of that card Joel brought him. Tell him Joel will buy another one. Then tell Joel  _ to _ buy another one.”

“Ross is  _ lovely _ .” Matty shook his head at George, shoving him gently. “Shut up. You’re horrible, you are.” He grinned up at him, leaving George to roll his eyes once more.

“He is, isn’t he?” Ellie let out a laugh, before sipping at her glass of wine. “Are those real flowers in your hair?” She turned to Matty, fully engaging him in conversation, because that was something Ellie was good at.

This left George to drift off back into his own head, scanning the room, attempting to pick out something worth looking at amidst the sea of vaguely drunk, vaguely high people. There was certainly quite the calm to the room - a shared acceptance of one another, and a happiness felt fully, like blood in his veins.

He shared a look with Ross from across the room, finding that Ross blushed, looking away, embarrassed, when he smiled at him, and really, Matty was right, because Ross was lovely. George was just suddenly overwhelmed with the feeling that everyone was so lovely, and everything was just so  _ nice _ . Everything felt in its right place, he felt at home, even as he sat in someone else’s living room. He just wondered however, if home was less in the physicality of the four walls that surrounded you, and much more in the way you felt inside: the people around you, and that one person, curled up with his knees to his chest, right by your side.

George came to conclude that he really loved Matty quite a bit, when he thought about it. This felt like a whole new kind of love - something much stronger than he’d felt before, and he just couldn’t avoid the fact that it counted for a hell of a lot, even if it was just in a way that he was quite yet to understand. George just wasn’t in a rush at all, and instead found himself rather content with coming to terms with himself and the world he lived in at his own place.

Suddenly, everything was good, a whole new kind of good. The kind of good that really meant it, and not just the kind of good that really meant ‘not bad’. All it had really taken was for him to become content within himself and his own life, and not so fussed with waiting it out towards the weekend, and other people’s problems, and that girl called Laura, who he’d once considered vaguely pretty, who he’d spotted across the room.

It wasn’t that she wasn’t pretty anymore, because really she’d always been pretty. She just didn’t matter to him anymore, and perhaps that was fair, because all along, George hadn’t been able to help the feeling that he simply didn’t matter to her awfully very much.

He was pulled back into the present with the gentle tapping of Matty’s fingers against his shoulder. He came to notice that as he’d gotten lost off elsewhere: halfway in his head, and halfway at the other side of the room, that Ellie had gotten up and made her way back to the kitchen, maybe for another drink, or something like that.

“She’s lovely.” Matty let out a sigh, letting his head fall back into George’s lap, and George briefly considered pretending to mind, just for a moment. “I don’t deserve to know this kind of people, you know that?”

“Shut up. Course you do. You’re lovelier still.” George’s fingers found their way into Matty’s hair, twirling it around, and generally making a bit of a mess. Matty briefly considered pretending to mind, just for a moment. “I think the whole world is going to end up thinking you’re lovelier than me. What happened to dickhead Matty? What happened to him?”

Matty laughed a little, shaking his head. “There’s no dickhead Matty, there’s no lovely Matty. It’s just me. I’m a bit of both, I guess.” He let out a sigh, gazing up at George, just because he was beautiful, and just because he could. “You know I reckon there’s one person who thinks you’re lovelier than me.”

“And who’s that?” George raised his eyebrows, unable to avoid coming off unconvinced.

“My mum.” Matty explained, having gone into quite a few extensive conversations about George with her, now that he technically was staying at home again. He had reckoned that living with his mum when he was nineteen was something that he’d never enjoy, but Matty just couldn’t avoid the fact that as he was right now, he’d just never really been happier. 

“She wants to meet you, you know? Proper little family dinner. Proper little invite your boyfriend over kind of thing. Proper disgusting, isn’t it?” Matty groaned a little at the thought.

“ _ Personally _ .” George announced, grinning. “I think it’s  _ lovely _ . And personally, I’m sure your mum’s lovely.”

“Yeah.” Matty nodded. “She is. I mean, everything’s just so…”

“Lovely?” George finished for him, giggling a little.

“I’m not sure what it is, but… I just… hey…” He met George’s gaze, something suddenly changing in his eyes. “George, I love you. You know that, right?”

George couldn’t help but grin. “It’s the weed, babe.” He reached and took Matty’s hand in his. “I love you too, though.”

Matty grimaced. “Whatever you do. Don’t ever call me babe again.”

George let out a snort. “Whatever you say… babe.”

That time, however, Matty didn’t bother considering pretending to mind. Not even for a moment. This felt like everything he could ever possibly need, and he’d finally given up trying to argue with himself. It was a long time coming, really he should have given up that very first moment in the shop, when he’d glanced over at George, and thought him to be the most beautiful person in the world, but found something else inside him so desperately protesting against that. 

Perhaps getting rid of that something else had just been the best thing that he’d ever done, because now, through and through, with his hand on his heart, he could finally, honestly, say that he was happy. And he knew that George could say the same for himself. 

Matty had finally figured it out - that was what mattered.

~


End file.
